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V 






NOTES OF A TRAVELLER, 



ON THE 



SOCIAL AND POLITICAL STATE 

OF 

FRANCE, PRUSSIA, SWITZERLAND, 

ITALY, 

AND OTHEE PAETS OF EUEOPE, 
Burtng tije present ©enturp. 

BY SAMUEL EAING, ESQ., 

AUTHOR OF " A JOURNAL OF A RESIDENCE IN NORWAY," AND OF " A TOUR. IN SWEDEN." 

jbt milm. 




LONDON : 
LONGMAN, BROWN, GREEN, AND LONGMANS. 

1854 



PREFACE. 



The changes produced by the French Eevolution in the 
social economy of the European people are so extensive 
and important, reaching downwards to the very foundation 
of the former feudal structure of society, that History, it 
may be truly said, only begins for posterity with this 
century. The monarchical, aristocratical, and ecclesiastical 
elements of the former social economy of Europe, even 
property, law, power, have all been altered in relations, 
proportions, and intensity of influence ; and the living of 
the generation which witnessed the commencement of the 
French Eevolution have, in fifty years, been removed five 
hundred from the order of things previously established. 
The events and personages connected with this great 
convulsion will, no doubt, find their historian; but the 
alterations produced by it in the social structure and ar- 
rangements of almost every country, are scarcely noticed 
by our travellers and political writers, occupied with the 
more brilliant scenes or novelties of the age; and the future 
historian or philosopher may even want materials, notwith- 
standing all the literature of our days, for forming a just 



IV PREFACE. 

estimate of the amount, nature, and tendencies of the 
changes effected, or in progress, during this half century, 
in the social economy of Europe. The Author of the fol- 
lowing Notes has attempted in two preceding works — one 
on Norway,* and one on Swedent — to collect materials on 
the social economy of those two countries, which, although 
distant from the centre of action, have not been beyond the 
reach of its disturbing force. This work is intended to be 
a continuation of the same attempt, to collect materials for 
the future historian or philosopher who shall endeavour to 
describe and estimate the new social elements in Europe 
which are springing up from, and covering the ashes of, the 
French Ke volution. 

* Journal of a Residence in Norway, by Samuel Laing. Longmans, 
London, 
t A Tour in Sweden, by Samuel Laing. Longmans, London. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

Travel- writing. — Holland. — The Sublime in Scenery. — The Picturesque in 
Holland. — Garden Houses. — Decay of Holland. — Causes. — Manufactur- 
ing Stability. — Useful Arts. — Fine Arts. — Useful and Fine Arts compared. 
— The Poor in Holland. — The Poor in Manufacturing Towns. — Poor 
Colonies. — Kingly Power in Holland. — Belgium. — Federalism. — Union 
of the two Countries. — The Federal Principle , Page 1 



CHAPTER II. 

France — Face of the Country. — Of England — old Subdivision of Land in 
England. — Great Social Experiment in France — Abolition of Primoge- 
niture. — Opinions of Arthur Young — Mr. Birbeck — Edinburgh Re- 
viewers. — Dr. Chalmers reviewed. — Effects of the Division of Land in 
France examined. — French Character — Morals — Honesty — Decimal Di- 
vision of Weights and Measures, why not popular 22 



CHAPTER III 

Social Economy — why not treated as a distinct Science. — Aristocracy re- 
placed by Functionarism in France — in Germany. — Interference of Go- 
vernment with Free Agency. — Amount of Functionarism in a French 
Department — Indre et Loire — Amount in a Scotch County — Shire of 
Ayr. — Effects of Functionarism on Industry — on National Character — 
on Morals — on Civil and Political Liberty. — Change in the State of 
Property in Prussia. — Two Antagonist Principles in the Social Economy 
of Prussia 44 



VI CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER IV. 

Prussia. — Not constituting one Nation. — Prussian Policy in this Century. 
— Attempt to form National Character. — Why not successful. — Military 
Orginisation of Prussia. — Liability to Military Service of all Prussians, 
■ — Service in the Line — in the Army of Reserve. — First Division. — Se- 
cond. — Effects of the System on the Political Balance of Europe. — Its 
Advantages. — Its Disadvantages compared to a Standing Army. — Its 
great Pressure on Time and Industry.— Its inferiority as a Military 
Force. — Amount of Military Force of Prussia. — Defect in the Continental 
Armies. — Non-commissioned Officers. — Men. — Too delicately bred in 
the Prussian Army. — Longevity of Officers. — The probable Issue of a 
W ar between Prussia and France. — Policy of England if such a War 
arise 67 

CHAPTER V. 

Notes on the Prussian Educational System.— Its Effects on the Moral Con- 
dition of the People , 90 

CHAPTER VI 

Notes on the Prussian Educational System continued. — Its Effects on the 
Social and Moral Condition and Character of the People. 100 

CHAPTER VII. 

Disjointed State of Prussia as one National Body. — Different Laws and 
Administrations. — Functionarism. — Aristocracy and Functionarism 
compared 116 

CHAPTER VIIL 

Berlin. — Leipsic— Book- trade — its Effects on the Literature — on the Cha- 
racter—on the Social Economy of the Germans. — The German Theatre 

— its Influence The Educational Influences in Society. — The Scotch 

and the Germans compared 126 

CHAPTER IX. 

Notes on the Rhine.— Switzerland. — Swiss Character. — Church of Geneva. 
— Swiss Scenery . 141 

CHAPTER X. 

Notes on Switzerland. — Montreux. — Checks on Over Population. — Swiss 
Dairy. — Agriculture. — Social Condition 156 



CONTENTS, Vll 

CHAPTER XL 

Lyons. — On its Manufacturing System. — Notes on Avignon. — French Bar- 
racks. — Cookery — its Effects on National Wealth 174 

CHAPTER XII. 
Notes on Genoa. — Poor of Genoa. — Causes of the Decline of Genoa... 184 

CHAPTER XIIL 

Notes on Naples — Scenery. — Vesuvius. — Pompeii. — Neapolitan People — 
Causes of their Low Condition 190 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Travelling in Italy. — Vetturini. — Capua. — Terracini. — Pontine Marshes. 
Maremma. — The Approach to Rome. — Coliseum 202 

CHAPTER XV. 

Notes on St. Peter's. — On Rome Population. — Position. — Causes of the 

Rise of Rome. — Origin of Rights of Property. — Civilisation of Ancient 
Rome 214 

CHAPTER XVL 

The Pope's Benediction. — Vatican Library, — Tomb of Clement XIII 

Horses of Monte Cav alio. — Ancient and Modern Sculpture 224 

CHAPTER XVIL 
Church of Rome. — Catholicism and Protestantism 230 

CHAPTER XVHL 

The Olive-Tree — its Effects in Social Economy. — Maize. — Potatoes. — Flo- 
rence. — Division of Land in Tuscany. — State of the People. — State of 
the Continental and English People compared 251 

CHAPTER XIX. 
Florence to Bologna. — Notes on Venice 257 



Viil CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER XX. 



The Brenta, — Italian Towns. — Way of Living of the Lower Classes. — 
Difference between the Italian and English Populations. — Causes of the 
Difference, — Reproductive and Unreproductive Expenditure 265 

CHAPTER XXI. 

Milan Como. — Austrian Government. — Notes on Lago Maggiore. — 

Isola Bella. — The Alps. — On the Social State of France, Prussia, 
Italy < 277 



NOTES OF A TRAVELLER, 

&0. 



CHAPTER I. 

TRAYEL-WR1TING. HOLLAND. THE SUBLIME IN SCENERY. — THE PICTURESQUE 

IN HOLLAND. GARDEN HOUSES. DECAY OF HOLLAND. CAUSES. MANUFAC- 
TURING STABILITY. USEFUL ARTS. FINE ARTS. — USEFUL AND FINE ARTS 

COMPARED. THE POOR IN HOLLAND. THE POOR IN MANUFACTURING TOWNS. 

POOR COLONIES. KINGLY POWER IN HOLLAND. BELGIUM. FEDERALISM. 

UNION OF THE TWO COUNTRIES. THE FEDERAL PRINCIPLE. 

In the social state of the Continent, as it has settled itself since 
the great political and moral epoch of the French Revolution, 
there is a vast field to explore which has scarcely been looked at 
by our Continental travellers. No period since the introduction 
of Christianity will be considered by posterity of equal importance 
with this half of the nineteenth century — of equal influence in 
forming the future social and moral condition of the European 
people. All the great social influences, moral and physical, which 
have sprung up from the ashes of the French Revolution, and 
all the influences accumulating in prior times ; — the diffusion of 
knowledge by the press ; of sentiments of religious and civil 
freedom by the Reformation ; of wealth, wellbeing, and political 
importance in the middle class, or those between the nobility and 
peasantry of the feudal ages, by trades, manufactures, and in- 
dustry ; the influence over all ranks of acquired tastes, and wants 
unknown to their forefathers ; the influence of public opinion 
over the highest political affairs ; and the influence of all the vast 
discoveries of the preceding 400 years, in navigation, science, and 
the useful arts; — are, in reality, only coming into full play and 
operation now, in this half century, upon the social state of 
Europe. The French Revolution was but the first act in the 






2 TRAVEL-WRITING. 

great social drama. Travellers complain that travel- writing is 
overdone — that the Continent is exhausted of all its interest. 
Is it not possible that they themselves are blind to the great in- 
terests and influences which would attract the public mind; that 
they are continuing to feed the man with the panada and water- 
gruel of the child 1 In these our locomotive days, the hurried 
public has no leisure to sit listening to the traveller of the old 
school, piping the little song of his personal adventures in countries 
as familiar to their imaginations as the county of York. He 
pours his tale into a sleeping ear, if he has nothing to pour but 
his personal feelings and adventures, or his voracious doings on 
the tea and toast of the village inn : he is like a blind beggar 
trying to amuse the children of the deaf and dumb asylum with 
a tune on his fiddle. 

I am an excellent travel-reader myself. I eat, drink, and 
sleep, for my part, with my traveller. I mourn with him, by 
land, over all the calamities of jolting roads, saucy landlords, 
scanty dinners, and dirty tablecloths ; and am enchanted, at sea, 
with the gale, the calm, the distant sail, the piece of sea-weed 
floating past, the solitary sea-bird skimming round, and all the 
other memorabilia of a voyage across the Queensferry or the At- 
lantic. But this school of readers is almost extinct. The reading 
public of the present day labours under a literary dyspepsia, and 
has no appetite for the former ordinary fare. Diaries, journals, 
narratives, descriptions, feelings, and wisdom of the first quality, 
from every corner of the world, have so satiated the omnivorous 
reader, that results only, the concentrated essences of the travel- 
ler's observations, are in demand, not the detail of petty incidents 
by which they have been obtained ; the sums total and products, 
not the items and units of his account current. This fastidious- 
ness of the public taste places the traveller, especially in well- 
known lands, in an awkward dilemma. The little trivialties of 
travel, duly recorded as they occur, were very agreeable writing 
and reading ; although they certainly mix very discordantly with 
statistical details, or speculations on political and social economy, 
which not only the philosopher, or the historian, but the ordinary 
reader of the present day, expects from the Continental traveller. 
These are not the results or observations of a single incident, or 
a single forenoon, or a single tour, and cannot, with any truth, 
be interwoven in his accounts of any one day or place. He is 
obliged to concentrate his observations for the sake of truth, and 
to meet the public taste; yet he runs the risk in doing so of pro- 



HOLLAND. 3 

ducing a work which will lull to sleep, not amuse the reader. 
The, risk must be run. A great field of inquiry and observation 
on the Continent is open. The traveller may not be the -nnost 
suitable literary labourer to explore it ; but if his views should be 
narrow and incorrect, his conclusions ill founded or egregiously 
wrong, still they may be useful by inducing men of higher capacity 
to take the same path, to examine the same subjects, and discover 
what is right and well founded. In political philosophy the road 
to truth lies through error. 

Holland, the land of cheese and butter, is to my eye no un- 
picturesque, uninteresting country. Flat it is ; but it is so 
geometrically only, and in no other sense. Spires, church towers, 
bright farm-houses — their windows glancing in the sun, long 
rows of willow-trees — their bluish foliage ruffling up white in 
the breeze ; grassy embankments of a tender vivid green, partly 
hiding the meadows behind, and crowded with glittering gaudily 
painted gigs, and stool waggons, loaded with rosy-cheeked laugh- 
ing country girls, decked out in ribbons of many more colours 
than the rainbow, all astreaming in the wind; — these are the 
objects which strike the eye of the traveller from seaward, and 
form a gay front view of Holland, as he sails or steams along its 
coast and up its rivers. On shore, the long continuity of hori- 
zontal lines of country in the background, each line rising behind 
the other to a distant, level, unbroken horizon, gives the impres- 
sions of vastness and of novelty. It is curious how differently 
we are impressed by expansion in the horizontal and expansion 
in the perpendicular plane. Take a section of this country spread 
out horizontally before the eye, four miles or five in length, and 
one or two in breadth, and it is but a flat unimpressive plain. But 
elevate this small unimpressive parallelogram of land to an angle 
of sixty degrees with the horizon, and it becomes the most sub- 
lime of natural objects; it surpasses Mont Blanc — it is the side 
of Chimborazo. Set it on edge, and it would overwhelm the be- 
holder with its sublimity. It would be the Hymalaya mountains 
cut down from their dizziest peak to the level of the ocean — a 
precipice so sublime, that the mind would shrink in terror from 
its very recollection. Now why does this section of land, which 
would be but a small portion of the extent of flat plain under the 
eye at once from any little elevation, such as a dyke or a church 
tower, in this country, pass from the unimpressive through the 
beautiful, the grand, and to the utmost sublime by mathematical 
steps, one may say, and according to its angle of elevation i 



4 THE SUBLIME IN SCENERY. 

The only solution of this fact in the sublimity of natural objects 
is, that terror is not. as has been assumed by Burke and our 
greatest philosophers, the cause of the impression of sublimity in 
the human mind. Terror must be the effect of the sublime ; not 
its cause, source, or principle. In this supposed instance of the 
sublime in nature, power is evidently the cause of that impres- 
sion, — the intuitive mental perception that great unknown power 
has been exerted to produce this sublime object. It is the feeling, 
or impression, of this vast power, which produces that feeling ot 
terror allied with and considered the cause, although in reality 
only the effect, of the sublime. This impression of power, re- 
ceived from any great and rare deviation from the usual, makes 
the perpendicular more sublime than the horizontal, the Gothic 
cathedral than the Grecian temple, the mountain than the plain, 
the cataract than the lake, the storm than the calm. Unusual 
vastness, such as the great extent of flat country seen from any 
of the church towers in Holland, is also an expression of power, 
and is not without its grandeur; but it never reaches the sublime, 
because the mind, accustomed to the sight of extension developed 
horizontally, perceives not the principle of power in it at once. 
This sentiment of power may possibly have something to do even 
with our impression of the beautiful in natural objects. The 
waved line — Hogarth's line of beauty — is agreeable, and the 
angular, broken, or jagged line, the contrary; because the one 
expresses a continuity of power in its formation — the other a 
disturbance, or break, in the action of the forming power. The 
latter would reach the sublime, if the disturbance, or break, were 
on a great scale, indicating vastness of power. 

Holland can boast of nothing sublime ; but for picturesque 
foregrounds — for close, compact, snug home scenery, with every 
thing in harmony, and stamped with one strong peculiar 
character, Holland is a cabinet picture, in which nature and art 
join to produce one impression, one homogeneous effect. The 
Ihitch cottage, with its glistening brick walls, white painted 
wood-work and rails, and its massive roof, of thatch, with the 
stork clappering to her young on her old-established nest on the 
top of the gable, is admirably in place and keeping, just w^here it 
is — at the turn of the canal, shut in by a screen of willow-trees, 
or tall reeds, from seeing, or being seen, beyond the sunny 
bight of the still calm water, in which its every tint and part is 
brightly repeated. Then the peculiar character of every article 
of the household furniture, which the Dutch built house-mother 



GARDEN HOUSES. 5 

is scouring on the green before the door so industriously • the 
Dutch character impressed on every thing Dutch, and intuitively 
recognised, like the Jewish or Gipsy countenance, wherever it is 

met with ; the people, their dwellings, and all in or about them 
— their very movements in accordance with this style or 
character, and all bearing its impress strongly — make this 
Holland, to my eye, no dull unimpressive land. There is soul 
in all you see ; the strongly marked character about every thing 
Dutch pleases intellectually, as much as beauty of form itself. 
What else is the charm so universally felt, requiring so little to 
be acquired, of the paintings of the Dutch school 1 The objects 
or scenes painted are neither graceful, nor beautiful, nor sublime ; 
but they are Dutch. They have a strongly marked mind and 
character impressed on them, and expressed by them ; and 
every accompaniment in the picture has the same, and harmo- 
nises with all around it. 

The Hollander has a decided taste for the romantic : great 
amateurs are the Mynheers of the rural. Every Dutchman 
above the necessity of working to-day for the bread of to-morrow, 
has his garden-house (Buyteplaats) in the suburbs of his town 
(for the Dutch population lives very much in towns surrounded 
by wet ditches), and repairs to it on Saturday evening with his 
family, to ruralise until Monday over his pipe of tobacco. Dirk 
Hatterick, we are told in Guy Mannering, did so. It is the 
main extravagance of the Dutch middle-class man, and it is 
often an expensive one. This garden-house is a wooden box 
gaily painted, of eight or ten feet square ; its name, " My 
Delight," or " Kural Felicity," or " Sweet Solitude," stuck up 
in gilt tin letters on the front ; and situated usually at the end 
of a narrow slip of ground, inclosed on three sides with well- 
trimmed hedges and slimy ditches, and overhanging the canal, 
which forms the boundary of the garden plot on its fourth side. 
The slip of land is laid out in flower-beds, all the flowers in one 
bed being generally of one kind and colour ; and the brilliancy 
of these large masses of flowers — the white and green paint- work, 
and the gilding about the garden-houses — and a row of those 
glittering, fairy summer lodges, shining in the sun, upon the side 
of the wide canal, and swimming in humid brilliancy in the 
midst of plots and parterres of splendid flowers, and with the 
accompaniments of gaily dressed ladies at the windows, swiftly 
passing pleasure boats with bright burnished sides below, and a 
whole city population afloat; or on foot, enjoying themselves in 



6 DECAY OF HOLLAND. 

their holyday clothes — form, in truth, a summer evening scene 
which one dwells upon with much delight. I pity the taste 
which can stop to inquire if all this human enjoyment be in 
good taste or bad taste, vulgar or refined. I stuff my pipe, hire 
a boatman to row me in his schuytje up the canal to a tea 
garden, and pass the evening as Dutchly and happily as my 
fellow-men. 

Holland is the land of the chivalry of the middle classes. 
Here they may say in honest pride, to the hereditary lords and 
nobles of the earth in the other countries of Europe, See, what 
we grocers, fishcurers, and shipowners have done in days of yore, 
in this little country ! But, alas ! this glory is faded. In the 
deserted streets of Delft, and Ley den, and Haarlem, the grass is 
growing through the seams of the brick pavements ; the ragged 
petticoat flutters in the wind out of the drawing-room case- 
ment of a palace ; the echo of wooden shoes clattering through 
empty saloons tells of past magnificence — of actual indigence. 
This has been a land of warlike deed, of high and independent 
feeling ; the home of patriots, of heroes, of scholars, of philoso- 
phers, of men of science, of artists, of the persecuted for religious 
or political opinions from every country, and of the generous 
spirits who patronised and protected them. Why is the 
Holland of our times no longer that old Holland of the sixteenth 
and seventeenth centuries 1 Why are her streets silent, her 
canals green with undisturbed slime ? 

The greatness of Holland was founded upon commercial pros- 
perity and capital, not upon productive industry.* Her capital 
and industry were not employed in producing what ministers to 
human wants and gratifications ; but in transmitting what 
other countries produced or manufactured, from one country to 
another. She was their broker. When their capitals, applied 
at first more beneficially to productive industry, had grown 

* The herring fishery of Holland has usually been represented as the 
branch of productive industry from which her wealth was drawn. 
Amsterdam is founded, we are told, on herring bones. Sir "William 
Temple, and all political economists since his day, have indulged in gross 
exaggerations of the importance and value of this branch of productive 
industry; and our government has scarcely yet thrown off the mania of 
legislating, by bounties, boards, and regulations, for an unnatural extension 
of the British herring fishery — unnatural because it is production beyond 
consumption, and is forced by bounties beyond the demand for the article. 
The following is the present state of the Dutch herring fishery; viz. 
In 1841— 



CAUSES OF DECAY. 7 

large enough to enter also into the business of circulation, as 
well as into that of production — into commerce, properly so 
called — the prosperity of Holland, founded upon commerce 
alone, unsupported by a basis of productive industry within her- 
self, and among the mass of her own population, fell to the 
ground. This is the history of Holland. It speaks an important 
lesson to nations. 

The world has witnessed the decline of commercial greatness 
in Venice, in Genoa, in Florence, in the Hans Towns, in Holland, 
— of military greatness in Rome, France, Sweden, Prussia ; but 
has yet to learn whether productive greatness, that which is 

Flardingen has fitted out; 79 busses. 



Delfshaven 


- 


- 2 


Zwartwaal 


. 


- 4 


Mittelhaus 


- 


- 2 


Schevening 
Pirnis 


- 


- 1 

- I 


Schiedam 


-• 


- * 


Maassluys 
Eiikhuyzen 
Pip 
Amsterdam 


- 


- Iff 

- 4r 

7 



Total 123 

Now suppose each buss to stow 400 barrels — and they are not vessels which 
can stow more, being small and lumbered with their nets and provisions — 
and suppose each to make two trips, and to be a full ship each trip ; this 
outfit will produce, after all, only 98,400 barrels of herrings, or about one 
half of the quantity usually cured in the county of Caithness.- We have no 
reason to suppose that the real effective market for herrings was ever more 
extensive than it is now. By dint of bounties, no doubt, the Dutch may 
have sent out more busses, and cured more fish formerly ; but if this 
increased production was forced beyond the demand and consumption, 
and the loss made good by the bounty to the producer, which is precisely 
the working of our bounty system in all things as well as in herrings, the 
country was no gainer by this surplus of production beyond a consumption 
at a reproductive price. Suppose, in the highest state of prosperity of the 
Dutch herring fishery, that they had the number of busses at sea which 
flourish before our eyes in the pamphlets innumerable on the Dutch 
herring fishery — say that they had 600 or 800, say 1200 sail in any one 
year, and all full ships; this gives us but 960,000 barrels of herrings, 
worth about as many pounds sterling. This is probably one-third more of 
this kind of food than all the markets, including the Russian and West 
Indian, ever consumed in one year; but throw it all to- the credit of the 
Dutch herring fishery as clear gain, still it is no great item of national 
wealth and production. It is at best a small thing magnified by bounty- 
fishers into a source of great national wealth. 



8 COMMERCIAL DECLINE. 

founded upon the manufacturing industry of a people in all the 
useful arts, be equally fleeting. It seems to rest upon principles 
in political philosophy of a more stable nature. It is more 
bound to soil and locality by natural circumstances. The useful 
metals, coals, fire-power, water-power, harbours, easy transport 
by sea and land, a climate favourable to out-door labour in win- 
ter and summer, are advantages peculiar to certain districts of 
the earth, and are not to be forced by the power of capital into 
new localities. Markets may be established any where, but 
not manufactures. Human character also, in the large, is 
formed by human employment, and is only removable with it. 
The busy, active, industrious spirit of a population trained to 
quick work, and energetic exertion of every power, in the com- 
petition of a manufacturing country, is an unchangeable moral 
element in its national prosperity, founded upon productive 
industry. Look at an Englishman at his work, and at one of 
these Dutchmen, or at any other European man. It is no exag- 
geration to say, that one million of our working men do more 
work in a twelvemonth, act more, think more, get through more, 
produce more, live more as active beings in this world, than any 
three millions in Europe, in the same space of time ; and in this 
sense I hold it to be no vulgar exaggeration, that the Englishman 
is equal to three or to four of the men of any other country. 
Transplant these men to England ; and under the same impulse 
to exertion, and expeditious working habits, which quickens the 
English working class, they also would exceed their countrymen 
at home in productiveness. It is not in the human animal, but 
in the circumstances in which he is placed, that this most im- 
portant element of national prosperity, this general habit of quick, 
energetic, persevering activity, resides ; and these circumstances, 
formed by nature, are not to be forced into any country, inde- 
pendently of natural agency, by mere dint of capital. 

How little the mass of the people of the Seven United Pro- 
vinces, the boors or peasants, or even the burgesses of the middle 
and lower classes, had been acted upon by the wealth and pros- 
perity of the commercial class in the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries, may be seen in their dwellings, furniture, clothing, 
and enjoyments and habits of civilized life. These are all of the 
make, material, and age prior to the rise of the opulence and 
powder of Holland — of the age of Queen Elizabeth — and have 
remained, unchanged and unimproved, until that power and 
opulence have fallen again to the level from which they rose. 



USEFUL ARTS. — FINE ARTS. 9 

A commercial class, an aristocracy of capitalists, numerous 
perhaps as a moneyed body, but nothing as a national mass, 
were alone acted upon by this commercial prosperity ; and when 
trade gradually removed to other countries, the Dutch capitalist, 
without changing his domicile, easily transferred his capital to 
where the use of it was wanted and profitable. Holland remains 
a country full of capitalists and paupers ; her wealth giving 
little employment, comparatively, to her own population in pro- 
ductive industry, and adding little to their prosperity, wellbeing, 
and habits of activity in producing and enjoying the objects of 
civilised life. 

The difference of national mind, or character, in countries of 
which the wealth rests upon commerce, from that where it rests 
upon productive industry, is curiously brought out in the 
difference of their application to, and estimation of, the fine arts. , 
In Italy and in Holland, the social condition of great commer- 
cial wealth, with comparatively little employment given by 
it to the mass of the people, called into existence painters, 
sculptors, architects ; furnished artists, and encouragement for 
them — that is, demand and taste for their works. It was the 
main outlet for the activity of the public mind, and for the 
excess of capital beyond what could be profitably engaged in 
commerce. But a national mind formed, like that of the English 
people, in the school of productive industry, seeks the shadow at 
least of utility, even in its most extravagant gratifications. 
Horses, hounds, carriages, a seat in parliament, yachts, gardens, 
pet-farms, are the objects in which great wealth in England 
indulges, much more frequently than in grand palaces, fine 
jewels, valuable paintings, delightful music, or other tastes con- 
nected with the fine arts. The turn of the public mind is deci- 
dedly towards the useful arts, for which all, high and low, have 
a taste differing not so much in kind, as in the means and 
scale of its gratification. Capital can be so much more exten- 
sively employed in reproduction in the useful arts, where a 
whole population has a taste for, and consumes their objects, 
that the excess to be invested in objects of the fine arts is sur- 
prisingly small in England, considering the vast amount and 
diffusion of her wealth. What is not useful, at least in appear- 
ance, is but lightly esteemed as an expenditure of money. 
A duke and his shoemaker, or tailor, or tenant, have precisely 
the same tastes, lay out their excess of capital in objects of the 
same nature, in gratifications of the same kind ; differing only in 



10 USEFUL AND FINE ARTS COMPARED. 

cost, not in principle. Look, in England, into the tradesman's 
parlour, kitchen, garden, stable, way of living, amusements, and 
modes of gratification — all is in the same taste as the nobleman's : 
the same principle of utility runs through all. The cultivated 
or acquired tastes for the fine arts, for music, painting, sculpture, 
architecture, are little, if at all, more developed among the 
higher or wealthier classes, than among the middle or lower 
classes. England at this day, with ten thousand times the 
wealth, furnishes no such demand for, and supply of objects of 
the fine arts, as Florence, Genoa, or Holland did, in the days of 
their prosperity. Is this peculiar development of the national 
mind of the English people, this low appreciation and small 
social influence of the fine arts compared to the useful, among 
them, matter of just regret, as many amateurs consider it ; or is 
it matter of just and enlightened exultation, that our social 
condition has advanced so far beyond that of any civilized people 
who have preceded us, that the tastes and gratifications which 
the few only of great wealth and great station in a community 
can cultivate and enjoy, are as nothing in the mass of intellec- 
tual and bodily employment which the many give, by the 
demands upon intellect, and industry, for their gratifications ? 

What, after all, is the real value, in the social condition of 
man, of the fine arts ? Are they not too highly estimated — 
raised by prejudices inherited from a period of intellectual 
culture far behind our own, into a false importance 1 Do they 
contribute to the wellbeing, civilisation, and intellectuality of 
mankind, as much as the cultivation of the useful arts 1 Do 
they call into activity higher mental powers, or more of the 
moral qualities of human nature, than the useful arts] Is the 
painter, the sculptor, the musician, the theatrical performer, 
generally a more cultivated, more intellectual, more moral mem- 
ber of society, a man approaching nearer to the highest end 
and perfection of human nature, than the engineer, the 
mechanician, the manufacturer ? Is Home, the seat of the fine 
arts, upon a higher, or so high a grade, in all that distinguishes 
a civilized community, as Glasgow, Manchester, or Birmingham, 
— the seats of the useful arts ? Are Scotland and the United 
States of America — without a good picture, a good statue, or a 
good palace within their bounds, and without more taste, feeling 
or knowledge in the fine arts, among the mass of the people, 
than among so many New Zealanders — very far below Italy, or 
Bavaria, with their fine arts, tastes, and artists, as moral and 



USEFUL AND FINE ARTS. 1 1 

intellectual communities of civilized men ? Is a picture, a 
statue, or a building, so high an effort of the human powers, 
intellectual and physical, as a ship, a foundeiy, a cotton-mill, 
with all their complicated machineries and combinations 1 We 
give, in reality, an undue importance to the fine arts — reckon 
them important because they minister to the gratification, and 
are among the legitimate and proper enjoyments of kings and 
important personages ; but, like the military profession, or the 
servile employments about a royal court, their importance is 
derivative only — is founded on prejudice or fashion, not on 
sound philosophic grounds. If the exercise of mental and 
physical power over inert matter for the advantage of man — if 
moral and physical improvement in our social condition be the 
standards by which the importance of human action and pro- 
duction should, in. reason, be measured,, (and to what other 
standard can they be applied ?) the fine arts may descend from 
the pedestals on which the court literature of the age of Louis 
XIY. had placed them in France, and in the little imitative 
German courts, and range themselves in the rear of the modern 
applications of science and genius to the useful arts. Raffaelle, 
Michael Angelo, Canova — immortal artists ! sublime producers ! 
what are ye in the sober estimation of reason ? The Arkwrights, 
the Watts, the Davys, the thousands of scientific inventors and 
producers in the useful arts; in our age, must rank before you, 
as wielders of great intellectual powers for great social good. 
The exponent of the civilisation, and intellectual and social 
progress of man, is not a statue, but a steam-engine. The 
lisping amateur hopping about the saloons of the great, may 
prattle of taste, and refined feeling in music, sculpture, painting, 
as humanising influences in society, as effective means and dis- 
tinguishing proofs of the diffusion of civilisation among man- 
kind ; but the plain, undeniable, knock-me down truth is, that 
the Glasgow manufacturer, whose printed cotton handkerchieis 
the traveller Landers found adorning the woolly heads of ne- 
gresses far in the interior of Africa, who had never seen a white 
human face, has done more for civilisation, has extended hu- 
manising influences more widely, than all the painters, sculptors, 
architects, and musicians of our age put together. Monstrous 
Vandalism, but true ! 

The Dutch are mostly caged in half-empty large towns, or vil- 
lages. To live a town life in the country, or a country life in the 
town is the most insipid and unsatisfactory of all ways of passsing 



1 2 THE POOR IN HOLLAND. 

life. Except in pictures, and in the novelty and character of 
their home-scenery, which is often a Dutch picture in real, Hol- 
land and its inhabitants are, in fact, not attractive. The climate 
is damp, raw, and cold for eight months ; hot and unwholesome 
for four. The Dutch people, eminently charitable and benevo- 
lent as a public, their country full of beneficent institutions 
admirably conducted and munificently supported, are as indi- 
viduals somewhat rough, hard, and, although it be uncharitable 
to say so, uncharitable and unfeeling. We have, too, at home, 
our excellent benevolent men, who will subscribe their sovereign, 
or their twenty, to an hospital, house of refuge, or missionary or 
charitable society for the relief or instruction of the poor ; but 
on principle withhold their penny from the shivering female on 
their door-steps, imploring alms for the pale, sickly infant in her 
arras. They are right on principle and consideration, quite 
right ; but one is not particularly in love with such quite right 
people. The instinct of benevolence in the heart is worth a 
whole theory of such political economy in the head. Here, in 
Holland, the privations and misery of the poor are necessarily 
very severe, the labouring class having very little agricultural 
work to turn to, as the land is mostly under old grass for dairy 
husbandry ; and even the inclosures, being wet ditches, not 
hedges or walls, require few annual repairs ; no manufacturing 
employment of any consequence, and, in fact, no work, except 
the transport of goods from the seaports to the interior. Fuel, 
too, that greatest item next to food in a poor man s comfort, is 
scarce and dear, being principally of peat-mud* scooped out of 
the bogs in the interior of the country, and baked in the sun 
like bricks. The centre of the province of Holland is excavated 
like a great lagoon, by the extraction of peat for ages. A small 
earthen dish of live embers, inclosed in a perforated wooden 
box, is carried about by the women of the poor, and even of the 
middle class ; and when they sit down to work, is put under 
their petticoats, and is the principal firing in the winter life of 
the poor female. The effect of the scarcity of fuel, or of the 
economy of it, in the Dutch household, is visible in the usual 
costume of the working and middle classes. The proverbial 
multiplicity of the Dutchman's integuments of his nether man, 
and the tier above tier of petticoat which makes his bulky frow 
a first-rate under sail, are effects of the dearness of fuel in a 
raw, cold, damp clime. 

In our manufacturing towns, the poor, however badly off, 



THE TOOK IN MANUFACTURING TOWNS. 13 

have more advantages in fuel, lodging, and occasional work 
produced by manufacturing establishments, than in towns of 
greater wealth arising from commerce, or from the fixed incomes 
of capitalists, landholders, and public functionaries. Edinburgh, 
for instance, is not a seat of manufactures. We see a wealthy 
or well-off upper class in it ; a thriving, well-to-do middle 
class, living by their expenditure ; and the class below, living 
by the family work and handicrafts required by the other two, 
not very ill off either ; but dive to the bottom of society even 
in Edinburgh, where fuel and fish are cheap, and land work 
and building work not scarce, but on the contrary taking off 
much common labour at all seasons, you find the surplus of the 
labouring class, beyond what the other two classes regularly 
employ, in extreme distress from the want of manufactures on a 
great scale circulating employment around them. Now, Hol- 
land is j ast one such great city spread over a small country ; 
and not a manufacturing city, but such a city of capitalists and 
of middle-class people living by their expenditure, but affording 
no labour to the lowest class — nothing but city work, as trades- 
men, family servants, and porters, seamen, or bargemen. The 
two upper classes, and those they employ of the lower class, may 
be well enough off; but such employment is stationary, has no 
principle of an increase in it keeping pace, in some degree, with 
the growth of population ; and the surplus who cannot find 
work in such a social body, is more wretched than in any other 
land. 

After the peace of 1816, Holland was among the first countries 
in Europe that was obliged to grapple with a pauperism which 
threatened to subvert all social arrangements. She established 
poor colonies on some of the barren, sandy tracts of back country, 
above and behind the rich alluvial delta of the Rhine and Scheldt. 
In 1821, when Holland and Belgium united in one monarchy, 
were recovering from the unsettled idle state in which countries 
exposed to the agitations and vicissitudes of war are kept — and 
which is the greatest evil of war — the total population of the two 
was 5,715,347; and of these 753,218 persons, or 1 person nearly 
in every 7^ of the population, was supported by public charity. The 
proportion of this pauperism which belonged to Holland and 
Belgium, severally, is not mentioned ; but from the very dif- 
ferent social state of the two populations — that of Holland 
altogether commercial and agricultural, that of Belgium manu- 
facturing as well as agricultural, and scarcely at all commercial 



14 PAUPERISM IN HOLLAND. 

— it would have been interesting to have seen distinctly the 
effects of pauperism on the two distinct elements, commercial 
activity and manufacturing industry. The total pauperism ap- 
pears to have exceeded, in 1821, the highest proportion of the 
population of England that was ever supported, wholly or in part, 
by poor rate. It is generally understood that 1 in 8 of the 
population was the greatest proportion in England, when poor 
rates were under no regulation, that ever received parochial 
relief The rich alluvial delta which the Scheldt, the Rhine, with 
its branches, the Maese, the Waal, the Yssel, and many smaller 
waters, form around the great inlets of the sea, the Biesbos, the 
Zuyder Zee, and the Dollert, are bounded on the land side by a 
frame of barren sandy ground of very little elevation above the 
rich land — the richest soil, perhaps, to be found north of the Alps 
— which it adjoins, but of very different fertility. A stunted 
heath growing from a thin covering of peat earth which hides 
only in patches the rough sand and gravel, is the principal natu- 
ral vegetation. In some spots, the pine exists rather than 
flourishes, and shallow pools are found in the hollows which have 
any soil in the bottom sufficiently tenacious to retain the rain- 
water. Unpromising as this land may appear for agricultural 
purposes, there is good reason for supposing that some of the best 
tracts of Flanders, and which now are the most fertile in the north 
of Europe, have originally been of the same quality. About 
Breda, and in many other districts, spots of the original land, 
untouched as yet by cultivation, remain visible as an encourage- 
ment to industry. But it is not an individual, nor a generation, 
that can reclaim a barren waste with advantage. Yet it may be 
done by the labour of many successive generations, applied with- 
out intermission to the same spot. Such improvement carries 
no profit with it. Capital is thrown away, and labour is not re- 
paid for many generations, unless a scanty subsistence from the 
soil be a repayment for the labour of cultivating it. Yet, if the 
land be the labourer's own, he will put up with that recompense. 
Each succeeding generation is better off, by the gradual improve- 
ment of the soil from continued cultivation. The foot of man 
itself leaves fertility behind it ; and th a poorest inhabited spot 
is always superior to the waste around it, and always in pro- 
portion to the length of time it has been used. The basis of 
this improvement of the uncultivated land of a country is un- 
doubtedly population settled as proprietors, and working on small 
garden-like portions, from generation to generation.. Large 



POOR COLONIES. LJ 

operations with outlay of capital, and hired labour, and the sys- 
tem of large farming, rarely succeed in reclaiming land, and still 
more rarely afford a real profit, even when attempted on single 
fields adjoining a cultivated large farm. The first operation in 
reclaiming land from a state of nature, is certainly to plant it 
with men. 

The Dutch began, in 18-18, to plant poor colonies in the 
barren tract behind the Zuyder Zee. A society of subscribers to 
a fund for the diminution of pauperism, aided by assistance from 
government, purchased an estate near Steenwyk, a small town 
in that tract of country, and commenced a poor colony, called 
Frederies-oort, with fifty- two families sent from different parishes 
which had subscribed to the fund. The whole cost 56,000 florins. 
or about <£4650 sterling, and its extent was about 1200 acres, 
of which about 200 had been cultivated, or at least laid into the 
shape of fields. The poor quality of the land may be imagined 
from its price. Each family, consisting on an average of six 
persons of all ages, and settled on an allotment of seven acres, 
was found to cost in outfit, ineludingthe expense of their house, fur- 
niture, food, and seed for one year, clothing, flax, and wool for their 
spinning, land for their cultivating, and two cows, about 17.00 
florins, or <£141, 10s. sterling; and in sixteen years the colonist 
was expected to repay this advance by the surplus production of 
his labour, besides maintaining his family. A strict system of 
co-operative and coercive labour, under discipline as in a penal 
workhouse, was established. The colonist worked by the piece 
under inspection of overseers, was paid by a ticket according to 
fixed rates for the different kinds of work, and the ticket was 
good for rations of food, or stores, at the shop or magazine of the 
society, delivered at fixed and moderate prices. The allotment of 
land was to become ultimately the colonist's own property when he 
had cleared the 1700 florins of advance ; and, by good conduct and 
industry, he could obtain various indulgences and encouragements 
during the sixteen years which were required to clear that sum, 
according to the calculations of the society. The founder of this 
establishment was a Dutch officer, General Yan der Bosh, who 
had seen in the East Indies, among the Chinese settlers in Java, 
the great agricultural results from the co-operative labour of 
small proprietors of land. With the people he had to deal — the 
paupers of town populations, with vice and idleness, as well as 
want and misery, in their social composition — he had to establish 
the arrangements and discipline, both as to rewards and punish- 



E 



16 POOR COLONY OF WORTEL. 

merits, of a penal colony. Constant employment under overseers 
was the fundamental law. The free proprietorship of the land at 
the end of sixteen years was the ultimate reward ; and medals 
for good conduct, and indulgences in the liberty of going about, 
were minor intermediate rewards. The punishments were con- 
finement and hard labour in a small town called Onmie Schantz. 
The parishes which subscribed to the funds of the society 5100 
guilders, or £4:25, had the privilege of sending three families or 
housekeepings, two of them consisting of six grown persons each, 
and the third of six orphans, or foundlings, not under six years 
of age, and a married couple with them to manage for the children. 
For the maintenance of each child, 60 guilders, or<£5, was to be 
paid yearly. It appears that, in 1826, the poor colony at Wortel, 
near Antwerp, established on the same plan, contained 125 farms, 
and the managers of it had contracted to take 1000 paupers for 
16 years, at 35 guilders, or 58s. Ad. sterling, per head yearly. 
In all, 20,000 persons were reckoned in 1826 in these poor colo- 
nies of Frederics-oort and Wortel. 

The separation of Holland and Belgium was of course unfavour- 
able to the progress of this great experiment on pauperism. I 
found, on visiting the pauper colony of Wortel, in 1841, that not 
one colonist had prospered so far as to repay the advance, accord- 
ing to the prospectus given out at its establishment in 1822 ; and 
that of 125 farms in cultivation in 1823, and 1000 paupers con- 
. tracted for, only 21 families are now remaining. It may be 
thought that this Belgian division of the great experiment on 
pauperism, is scarcely to be taken as a fair example of its feasi- 
bility, because it has not received from the present Belgian 
government the same fostering aid and encouragement as it did, 
and as that of Frederics-oort still does from the former Dutch 
government, the scheme having been specially favoured and 
cherished by the late or ex -king of Holland. 

But his schemes were not always the most judicious. This 
establishment at Wortel had the advantage of four years' expe- 
rience of the system as carried on at Frederics-oort, which was 
established in 1818; it had the advantage of being established 
by Captain Yan der Bosh, the son of the original proposer; it 
had the advantage, if any, of all the government aid from 1822 
till the separation of Belgium and Holland; and it has since had 
the real, and, for the political economist, much greater advantage, 
of having been left by government to its own resources, to the 
efficacy of its own principles. It has proved a failure : the colo- 



POOR COLONY OF WORTEL. 1 7 

nists who remain are, however, very far above pauperism. Their 
crops, houses, clothing, indicate very considerable prosperity ; 
but a good house which cost forty pounds sterling, seven acres of 
land, very barren to be sure, being mere sand} 7 heath, but still 
capable of improvement, and requiring no draining, or clearing 
of rocks, roots, trees, or obstructions, are data upon which a pauper 
may well become rich fur his station, if work also be found him 
for four days in the week, and paid for in rations of food, or in 
stores, and the other two days allowed him for working upon his 
own rent-free land. The question is, whether the work found 
for him by the public pays its cost, the wages paid for it either 
in rations of food, or in stores. The work consists in planting 
or cutting down trees ; in fencing and preparing land for cultiva- 
tion ; in cultivating the land which, in .part at least, is to furnish 
the paupers themselves with rations for their own subsistence; 
and also as in-door employment, in spinning, weaving, and manu- 
facturing all that is used, or issued in the colony. Poor-rate and 
workhouse labour applied in this way is undoubtedly a better 
general system, than if they are applied to the supply of the or- 
dinary markets of a country, with the same articles which give 
employment to the classes who are but just one step above pauper- 
ism. If every workhouse or poorhouse in the kingdom maintained 
itself by the value and sale of the work of its inmates, in shoemaking, 
weaving, rope-making, and such ordinary crafts as are carried on in 
workhouses, the system would just drive so much unaided, indepen- 
dent industry, into the poor-house: for the single unaided trades^- 
man, with house-rent, fuel, light, cost of raw materials of his pro- 
duct, and risk of its sale, all against him, could not stand against 
the competition of such assisted pauper-work. It is a wise prin- 
ciple, therefore, and in so far this pauper colony has been well 
considered, to apply pauper or penal labour only to the produc- 
tion of what the pauper or convict establishment consumes within 
itself. In the same barren tract of sandy heath in which the 
pauper colony of Wortel is established, there is a penal colony of 
about 600 convicts. They are worked under overseers, like all 
convict gangs, but in farm work, and producing their own neces- 
saries, and they thus raise some portion, at least, of their own 
food and clothing. It does not appear that escape is frequent ; 
and classification by separate working gangs, in this out-door 
work, of which all are capable, may be obtained without se- 
clusion. 

The crops of rye. clover, flax, potatoes, buckwheat, raised on 

B 



18 MONARCHICAL PRINCIPLE UNSUITABLE 

this barren land, both in the penal and in the pauper colony at 
Wortel, are very fine; and when one sees the miserable, sandy, 
sterile heath land, out of which these fertile spots have been 
created, foot by foot, as it were, by the most minute labour, and 
the most careful manuring, the ultimate failure with us of almost 
every attempt to bring such barren w T astes into fertility, by 
grand applications of labour and capital to a large area at once, 
is easily accounted for. The repetition of work on the same spot, 
the exposure of it by repeated turnings to the influence of the at- 
mosphere, the admixture of manure almost by hand, with every 
particle of the raw, barren soil, are operations which even capital 
cannot command, and which hired work upon the large scale can- 
not profitably accomplish. It is the time only, and that time not 
valued,of the small proprietor, which can fertilise, bit by bit, such 
land. It is, in one view, certainly not a profitable application of 
time and labour. They are not repaid in money or other value 
within any moderate time. In another view, it is profitable; the 
man who would be a pauper, feeds himself by his time and labour, 
and adds a little, however little, to the perpetual productiveness 
of his little farm. 

This land of flowers and of frogs is marvellously ill-adapted for 
the bed of royalty. Kingly government, a court, and nobility, 
are not in harmony with the character, habits, tastes, manners, 
ways of thinking and living, and established social economy of 
this commercial, counting-house population who for ages have 
been strangers to conventional rank and influence, either here- 
ditary, military, or literary, or to any other social distinction than 
what a man acquires for himself on 'Change. Such property 
and influence are too variable in society to be a secure basis for 
kingly power. They owe nothing to it. Competition, dis- 
union, and change, enter also more into them than into the 
element of landed property, which seems to be the only stable 
basis for monarchical government. Men who have acquired their 
own personal property and social weight, submit unwillingly to 
irresponsible royal management ; and a public bred, individually, 
to guide their own affairs, will not sit passive, and see them guided 
by a king and cabinet. They scrutinise too rigidly, perhaps, the 
royal doings, and have too little respect for royal dignity. The 
ex-king of Holland landed at Schevening, in 1813, with his port- 
manteau, and a bunch of orange ribands at his breast. His 
majesty retired from business in 1841, the richest individual in 
Europe, worth, it is said, above twenty millions of pounds sterling. 



TO HOLLAND AND BELGIUM. 19 

The recognition by law of 14th May, 1814, of all the old and 
forgotten state debts or obligations of Holland, was the origin of 
this enormous wealth. These old state paper debts were con- 
sidered to be as worthless as the assignats of the French Republic, 
and until their acknowledgment in 1814, were sold for a small 
value. By the stock-jobbing with the syndicate for paying off 
these state obligations from 1822-1830, and by the establishment 
of the Bank of Brussels, of which his majesty was a principal 
-stockholder, immense sums were gained. Besides, the exclusive 
management of the revenues of the East India colonies, without 
any obligation to render accounts of it, was, by a questionable in- 
terpretation of the 60th article of the Ground Law of the king- 
dom of the Netherlands, held to belong to, and was exercised by, 
the sovereign. In a trading country like Holland, and an ex- 
hausted country with a population of only 2,700,000 people, and 
a debt of 1129 millions of guilders bearing interest, and of 316 
millions of old debt gradually to be redeemed, in short with a 
taxation which cannot be pushed above 52 1 - millions, and a yearly 
expenditure of 72,183,500 guilders to provide for; the accumu- 
lation of wealth of such an enormous amount by the head of the 
state, as a private man, is looked upon with no very dutiful eye. 
It cannot be concealed, that the monarchical principle has been 
seriously injured in Holland, Sweden, and France, by the money- 
making, stock-jobbing propensities of the sovereigns. A king, 
in these censorious times, cannot turn an honest penny in trade, 
or stock -jobbing, like another man, without losing that isolation, 
from all private interests and feelings which is the essential in 
the royal position, and the main support of the monarchical 
principle in the human mind. In many branches of trade "one 
man's gain is another man's loss," according to the apprehension 
of the public ; and where this relation steps in between king and 
people — the king the gainer, the people the loser — the prestige 
of loyalty -to the millionnaire-monarch is gone. He is but a Boths- 
child on the throne. In Holland, where material interests have 
long been predominant, and are well understood, the successful 
application of their ex-king to his private material interests has 
not added to the real power or stability of the throne. 

The total separation of Holland and Belgium was a false step 
for the welfare of both. They should have divorced each other, 
the two little countries, from bed and board only. The one 
country is necessary to the other, and neither has the means to 
support a distinct housekeeping. Holland has capital, commerce, 



20 PRINCIPLE OF FEDERALISM. 

and magnificent colonies, but has nothing of her own manufac- 
turing to send to her colonies, no productions of her own industry 
to exchange with their industry, no commerce in any products 
of her own. Belgium has manufacturing industry, and the raw 
materials on which it works, coal-fields, iron-works, and many 
productive capabilities ; but has no colonies, no outlets, no mar- 
kets, no ships, no commerce. With the Prussian manufacturing 
provinces on the land side, England on the sea side, and no ship- 
ping or seaports but two, Antwerp and Ostend, and no free river 
trade even to the consumers on the continent behind her, Bel- 
gium is like the rich man in the fable, shut up with his treasures 
in his own secret closet, and starving to death in the midst of his 
gold, because he cannot unlock the door. These two little states 
will come together again before a hundred years go over their 
heads — not as one monarchy, for both want the foundation in 
their social structure for monarchical government to stand upon 
—but as two independent states federally united under one 
general government, like the United States of America., or the 
Swiss cantons. 

The principle of federalism has not been sufficiently examined 
by political philosophers. Theoretically, it is better adapted to the 
wants of man in society, than the principle of great monarchical 
dominions under a sole central government, wheresoever the 
physical or moral interests of the governed are discordant, where- 
soever the rights and advantages of one mass of population, their 
prosperity, industry, well-being, property, natural benefits of soil, 
situation, and climate, their manners, language, religion, nation- 
ality in spirit or prejudice, are set aside, and sacrificed to those 
of another mass. In almost all extensive monarchies this must 
be the case, from the centralisation inseparable from that species 
of general government. Federalism seems a more natural and 
just principle of general government, theoretically considered, than 
this forced centralisation. No rights or advantages of any of the 
parts are sacrificed in federalism, for nothing is centralised but 
what is necessary for the external defence, safety, and welfare of 
all the parts. The peculiar internal welfare of each part, accord- 
ing to its own peculiar internal circumstances, physical and moral, 
according to its own political idiosyncrasy, is in its own keep- 
ing, in its own internal legislative and administrative powers. 
As civilisation, peace, and industry acquire an influence in the 
affairs of mankind, which the individual ambition of a sovereign, 
or the ignorance and evil passions of a ministry, will not be al- 



PRINCIPLE OF FEDERALISM. 21 

lowed to shake, the superiority of small independent states fede- 
rally united, each extending over such territory, or masses of 
society only, as can be governed together, without the sacrifice 
of one part to another, and each interested in the general civili- 
sation, peace, and industry, will probably be acknowledged by 
all civilised populations. Junctions morally or physically dis- 
cordant, as that of Belgium and Holland, Austria and Lombard y, 
districts and populations on the Vistula and Niemen, with dis- 
tricts and populations on the Rhine and Moselle, are political 
arrangements which lack any principle of permanency founded 
upon their benefits to the governed. Nature forbids, by the un- 
alterable differences of soil, climate, situation, and natural advan- 
tages of country, or by the equally unalterable moral differences 
between j)eople anc [ people, that one government can equally 
serve all — be equally suited to promote the utmost good of all. 
Federalism involves a principle more akin to natural, free, and 
beneficial legislation, and to the improvement of the social con- 
dition of man, than governments in single extensive states, hold- 
ing legislative and executive powers over distant and distinct 
countries and populations, whether such governments be consti- 
tutional or despotic. It is much more likely to be the future 
progress of society, that Europe, in the course of time, civilisation, 
and the increasing influence of public opinion on all public affairs, 
will resolve itself into one great federal union of many states, of 
extent suitable to their moral and physical peculiarities, like the 
union of the American states, than that those American states 
will, in the course of time and civilisation, fall back into separate, 
unconnected, and hostile monarchies and aristocracies, which 
some modern travellers in America assure us is their inevitable 
doom. With all respect for their gifts of prophecy, the tendency 
of human affairs is not to retrograde towards the old, but to ad- 
vance towards the new, towards a higher physical, moral, and 
religious condition; towards forms of government in which the 
interests of the people shall be directed by the people, and for 
the people. Moral and intellectual power is leavening the whole 
mass, and not merely the upper crust of European society. 



22 FRANCE. 



CHAPTER II. 

FRANCE FACE OF THE COUNTRY. OF ENGLAND OLD SUBDIVISION OF LAND 

IN ENGLAND. GREAT SOCIAL EXPERIMENT IN FRANCE ABOLITION OF 

PRIMOGENITURE. OPINIONS OF ARTHUR YOUNG MR. BIRBECK EDINBURGH 

REVIEWERS DR. CHALMERS, REVIEWED. EFFECTS OF THE DIVISION OF 

LAND IN FRANCE EXAMINED. FRENCH CHARACTER MORALS HONESTY 

DECIMAL DIVISION OF WEIGHTS AND MEASURES, WHY NOT POPULAR. 

The traveller should either know a great deal about the country 
he is going to visit, or nothing at all ; and perhaps his readers 
would find themselves better off with his ignorance than his 
knowledge. lie is very apt to shut one eye, and look with the 
other tli rough a coloured glass which he has been at great pains 
to stain with the opinions and prejudices of other people, and 
which gives its own hue to every thing he sees through it. In 
politics, political, economy, and the fine arts, most people can 
only see through their neighbours' spectacles. In Frauce it is 
particularly difficult to exert the rare faculty of seeing through 
one's own eyes. France is a moral volcano which has shaken to 
the ground ancient social structures, laws, governments, and the 
very ideas, principles, or prejudices which supported them. Who 
of this generation can approach the crater of such mighty move- 
ments, and conscientiously say, that he is able to examine thorn 
calmly, philosophically, without preconceived theories, or specula- 
tions upon their causes or tendencies ? Every reflecting travel- 
ler admits that the great elements of change in the social 
condition of Europe which were thrown out by the French 
revolution, are only now beginning to work powerfully ; that 
the most important and permanent of its results have been 
moral, not political ; that in reality the French revolution is but 
in its commencement, as a great social movement. So far all 
observers of the times we live in travel together : but here they 
diverge. Each observes the agencies brought into operation 
up >n the mass of the European people by the French revolution, 
through the distorting medium of the opinions and prejudices 
of his own country, class, or social position as an individual, and 
reasons and prophesies only upon the shapes and colours which 
he sees through this false medium. Am I in a condition to see 
with clearer eyes ? I doubt it. I do not profess it. 



FRANCE. FACE OF THE COUNTRY. ' 23 

The traveller in France finds much to observe, but little to 
describe. The landscape is a wearisome expanse of tillage land, 
unvaried by hill and dale, stream and lake, rock and wood land. 
The towns and villages are squatting in the plains, like stranger 
beggar women tired of wandering in an unknown land. No 
suburbs of connected rows of houses and gardens, and of lanes 
dotted with buildings, trees, and brick walls, stretch, as in 
England, like feelers into the country, fastening the towns to it 
by so many lines, that the traveller is in doubt where country 
ends, and town begins. Here, the towns and villages are 
distinct, round, inhabited patches upon the face of the land, just 
as they are represented upon a map : and the flat monotonous 
surface of the map is no uncharacteristic sketch of the appear- 
ance of the country. La belle France, in truth, is a Calinuc 
beauty ; her flat pancake of a face destitute of feature, of 
projection or dimple, and not even tattooed with lines and cross 
lines of hedges, walls, and ditches. This wide unhedged expanse 
of corn-land on either hand, without divisions, or enclosures, or 
pasture fields, or old trees, single or in groups, is supremely 
tiresome. The traveller at once admits that France has a 
natural claim to the word which all other countries have 
borrowed from her — ennui. 

The green network of hedges spread over the face of England, 
that peculiar charm of English land, must have been formed at 
some very peculiar period in the history of the English people. 
It must have been the work of a nation of small proprietors 
long employed upon it. We view it as an embellishment only, 
and frequently as an incumbrance, rather than a convenience in 
husbandry \ but it is a memorial of an extinct social condition, 
different from the present, which has prevailed in some former 
and distant age in England. This subdivision of the land into 
small portions by permanent hedges and mounds of earth, is 
almost peculiar to England. In Scotland, in France, in Ger- 
many, in all European countries in which the feudal system 
gave the original law and tenure of land, no small properties 
fenced all round from each other have existed of old, unless, it 
may be, in a few small localities. In England, the history of 
society and property is written upon the face of the country. 
This immense work, unexampled in extent in any other country, 
must have been executed in the 600 years between the final 
departure of the Romans and the Norman conquest. The open 
unenclosed surface of those districts of France which belonged to 



24 ENGLAND. — FACE OF THE COUNTRY. 

the earlier kings of our Norman line, shows that in the state of 
the possession of landed property in those provinces in their 
time, no subdivisions by numerous small permanent enclosures 
had ever been required or formed. The small enclosures in 
England must have been made in a different state of society, 
before the Norman conquest, yet probably after the Romans 
left the country. No country occupied by the Romans shows 
any such traces of subdivision among a small proprietary. The 
Roman occupation of Britain was altogether military ; and such 
a body of small proprietary would have been adverse in a civil 
view, and their separate strong enclosures upon the face of the 
country obstructive in a military view, to the Roman power. 
The Saxons and Danes — one people in the principles of their 
laws, institutions, and languages, although in different states of 
civilisation — must have woven this immense veil over the face 
of the land during the six centuries they possessed England, 
under a social arrangement altogether different from the present ; 
one in which their law of partition of property, among all the 
children, excluding the feudal principle of primogeniture, would 
produce this subdivision of the land into small distinct fields. 

France is now, by the abolition of the feudal tenure of land 
and of the law of primogeniture, recommencing a state of society 
which was extinguished in England by the Norman conquest, 
and the laws of succession adopted from that period. France is 
in the midst of a great social experiment. Its results upon 
civilisation can only be guessed at now, and will only be distinctly 
seen, perhaps, after the lapse of ages. The opinions of all our 
political economists are adverse to it. Listen to the groans of 
the most acute observers of our days, on the appalling con- 
sequences of this division of landed property. Says Arthur 
Young, in 1789 (consequently before the sale of the national 
domains, crown and church estates, and confiscated estates of 
the noblesse, and before the law of the partition of property 
among all the children became obligatory on all classes of the 
community,) " Small properties, much divided, prove the 
greatest source of misery that can possibly be conceived, and 
has operated to such a degree and extent in France, that a law 
ought certainly to be made to render all division below a certain 
number of arpens illegal." Arthur Young wrote this just about 
fifty years ago, and a few months only before a law was passed 
directly opposed to the principle he recommends — the law 
abolishing the rights of primogeniture, and making the division. 



DIVISION OF LAND. 25 

of property among all the children obligatory ; and which law- 
has been ever since, that is, for nearly half a century, in general 
and uninterrupted operation. Listen, again, to Mr, Birbeck, a 
traveller of no ordinary sagacity. " Poor," says he, of the 
French people under this law, "from generation to generation, 
and growing continually poorer as they increase in numbers, — 
in the country, by the incessant division and subdivision of 
property ; in the towns, by the division and subdivision of 
trades and professions ; such a 'people, instead of proceeding from 
the necessaries to the comforts of life, and then to the luxuries, 
as is the condition of things in England, are rather retrograde 
than progressive. There is no advancement in French society, 
no improvement, no hope of it/' Hear, too, the chirp of Mr. 
Peter Paul Cobbet, in his ride through France. M Here, in 
Normandy, great lamentation on account of this revolutionary 
law. They tell me it has dispersed thousands upon thousands 
of families who had been upon the same spot for centuries." 
Listen, too, to the thunders of the Edinburgh Review. i; In no 
country of Europe is there such a vast body of proprietors (one 
half of the population of France is stated in the preceding 
paragraph to be proprietors,) and in no civilised European 
country, with the exception of Ireland, is there so large a pro- 
portion of the population (stated to be two-thirds) engaged 
directly in the cultivation, or rather, we should say, in the torture 
of the soil. And yet the system is but in its infancy. Should 
it be supported for another half century, la grande nation will 
certainly be the greatest pauper warren in Europe, and will, 
along with Ireland, have the honour of furnishing hewers of 
wood, and drawers of water, for all other countries in the world." 
Alas, for human wisdom ! Alas, for the predictions of Arthur 
Young, Mr. Birbeck, and the Edinburgh Review I But who can 
be a prophet at home ? Not that their prophecies were under- 
valued at home ; but their home-made prophecies were of no 
value — were framed upon narrow local views, and prejudices. 
When new social arrangements, diametrically opposed in 
principle and spirit to the feudal, grew up, and unfolded them- 
selves, first in America and afterwards in France, and gradually 
spread from thence over great part of the present Prussia, the 
feudalised minds of our Scotch political economists were lavish 
in their predictions of the degradation, misery, and barbarism 
which must inevitably ensue among that portion of the human 
race who were so unfortunate as to adopt the dictates of nature 



26 DR. CHALMERS ON THE DIVISION OF LAND. 

and reason in their legislation on property and social rank, 
instead of adhering to conventional and barbarous laws, and 
institutions, derived from the darkest period of the middle 
ages. 

If natural affection, humanity, reason, religion — if all that 
distinguishes man from the brute creation — speak more clearly 
in the human breast on the obligation of one duty than of 
another, it is on that of the parent providing equally according 
to his means for all the beings he has brought into existence 
and added to society ; leaving none of them to want and dis- 
tress if he can help it, or to chance for a precarious subsistence, 
or to be supported by his neighbours out of their alms, as 
paupers, or out of their taxes, as useless functionaries, or by 
uncertain dependence upon employment and bread from others. 
Is not this a moral and religious duty ? Is it not the clearest 
duty of the parent, not only to the offspring he has brought 
into existence, but to the social body of which he and they are 
members 1 Can any argument of expediency, drawn from our 
artificial state of society under the feudal system and feudal 
law of succession to property, and of the advantages of that 
system, J;n m away the natural sentiments of men from this 
great moral duty to their own offspring 1 from this great moral 
duty to the rest of society ? Yet listen to the morality and 
political economy taught lately in no obscure corner, and to 
no train fluential pupils, but from the Divinity chair of the 
University of Edinburgh, to the young men who were to go 
forth, and are now, the religious and moral instructors of the 
people in the established church of Scotland. "We know," 
says Dr. Chalmers, in his Political Economy in connection icith 
the Moral State and Moral Prospects of Society, being the sub- 
stance of a course of lectures delivered to the students of the 
Theological Hall in Edinburgh,—"' We know," says this distin- 
guished philosopher, " that there is a mighty force of sentiment 
and natural affection arrayed against the law of primogeniture. 
But here is the way in which we would appease these feelings, 
and make compensation for the violence done to them. We 
would make no inroad on the integrity of estates, or, for the 
sake of a second brother, take off to the extent of a thousand a 
year from that domain of ten thousand a year which devolved 
by succession on the eldest son of the family. We should think 
it vastly better, if, by means of a liberal provision in. all the 
branches of the public service, a place of a thousand a year lay 



FEUDAL SUCCESSION BY PRIMOGENITURE. 27 

open to the younger son, whether in the law, or in the church, 
or in colleges, or in any other well-appointed establishment 
kept up for the good and interest of the nation." 

Will the teachers, or the taught, of this new school of morality 
and political economy in the Theological Hall of Edinburgh, 
explain the moral principle on which they recommend the 
getting rid of " a mighty force of sentiment and natural affec- 
tion," and " the appeasing those feelings, and making compen- 
sation for the violence done to them, by places of a thousand a 
year," or by any other pecuniary compensation in the public 
service? The "mighty force of sentiment and natural affection," 
the " feelings to be appeased and compensated for the violence 
done them " by places in the church, or the law, or in colleges, 
or some other well-appointed establishment, are nothing less 
sacred, or of less moral value, than the paternal affection and the 
moral sentiment of justice to others, urging on the feelings of 
the parent to provide equally for each of his children to the 
utmost of his means ; and dictating to him, as a man, the moral 
duty to his fellow-men of not imposing upon them the burden 
of maintaining his progeny, either as parsers, or as superfluous 
public functionaries, if he has property to maintain them him- 
self. Will the teachers, or the taught, of this new school 
of moral and political philosophy in the University of Edin- 
burgh explain the moral, religious, or philosophical principle 
of this " appeasing and compensating " for the sacrifice of 
natural affection, moral feeling, and sentiment of duty, by 
places in the church, or the law, or in any other well-appointed 
establishments '? They are not in the position of ordinary men 
speaking or writing speculatively on morals, and responsible 
only as idle and uninfluential philosophers, or political writers, for 
the errors of their speculations. The men who are the profes- 
sional teachers of the people in morals and religion, are bound to 
hold none but the clearest and purest doctrines — to teach, and 
to be taught, nothing obscure or doubtful in political, moral, or 
religious science. The feudal system with its corner-stone, the 
law of primogeniture, may be a very good or very expedient system; 
but it is admitted by themselves to be an artificial arrangement of 
society and property, not established or upheld in the human mind 
by nature or religion, but, on the contrary, one against which 
" there is a mighty force of sentiment and natural affection 
arrayed." Will they explain the moral principle of their 
doctrine, that the most virtuous feelings in our nature — the 



2S MORALITY SACRIFICED TO THE FEUDAL SUCCESSION. 

mighty force of natural affection for our children, and the 
mighty force of the sentiment of justice to our fellow-men — 
should be sacrificed to support an artificial system or arrangement 
of society, be that system or arrangement ever so expedient or 
beneficial? Will they explain the moral principle upon which 
they recommend u the appeasing those natural feelings of affec- 
tion and moral duty, and the compensating for the violence 
done to them," by an appointment of a thousand a year, or by 
any other pecuniary compensation 1 Will they explain the 
moral difference between the conduct of the owner of a domain 
of ten thousand a year, who leaves it all to his eldest son, and 
leaves his younger son to be provided for by his neighbours out 
of their taxes, in some appointment of a thousand a year in the 
church, or the law, or in any other public establishment — which 
is the case propounded and recommended by them — and the 
conduct of the wretched female who exposes her new-born babe 
on her neighbour's door-step to be provided for out of his means ] 
The moral guilt of the latter, driven by want and misery to 
abandon the infant she is unable to maintain, appears to all 
men whose moral sense has not been cultivated at the Theological 
Hall of the University of Edinburgh, infinitely less than that of 
the man of ten thousand a year, who abandons his younger 
children to the support of the public, in order to leave ail his 
estate to the eldest son. Will they explain the moral grounds 
of their teaching, that the abandonment of his parental and 
social duties to his offspring, and to his fellow-men, is a laudable 
act in the case of the rich domain owner, and the same abandon- 
ment an immoral and criminal act in the case of the wretched 
strumpet 1 They are the teachers of the people of Scotland, 
whose principles of moral and political philosophy, as laid down 
in their own text-book, are here arraigned, and they ought to 
satisfy every doubt that is suggested to the public mind, either 
of the moral purity or of the philosophical correctness of their 
speculations. Will they explain the principle and justice of 
their political economy on this subject, and also its working and 
effects on society 1 If the owner of a domain of ten thousand a 
year is morally, and for the general benefit of society, entitled to 
a provision of a thousand a year for his younger son from the 
rest of the community — for they, the rest, pay with their taxes 
the appointments in the law, the church, and all other branches 
of public service, which it is proposed and recommended to 
establish for the benefit of the younger sons of those rich pau- 



IRISH SMALL TENANTRY. 29 

pers, and as a compensation to the latter for having stifled their 
natural affections as parents, and their sense of duty to thtir 
fellow-men — that younger son must be equally entitled to a 
provision for his younger son; for he too has natural affection 
and a moral sense to stifle, and to be compensated for. How 
long, to what extent, and with what effect on the wellbeing of 
society is this clerical system of political economy to work, by 
which the property of all is to be devoted to the subsistence, in 
highly paid offices, of a part of the community 1 AVill they also 
explain if all those younger sons of domain owners, thus to be 
provided for ad infinitum at the public expense, in order to 
enable and encourage wealthy parents to stifle the feelings of 
natural affection and social duty, and leave undiminished their 
domains often thousand a year to their eldest sons, are all to be 
born with the necessary qualifications for those liberal appoint- 
ments in the church, or in the law, or in the public service, 
which it is proposed to establish for their subsistence ? Are 
they, for instance, to be born clergymen of the church of Scot- 
land, with all the talents and acquirements needful, or are they 
only to bring into the world with them all the learning and 
divinity necessary, but are to acquire their principles of moral 
philosophy and political economy at the Theological Hall of the 
University of Edinburgh 1 

It is the duty of every inquirer into political and social 
economy to raise his voice against such attempts to educate a 
people into the support of any social or political system founded 
on mere expediency, not upon moral principle ; and which is 
not the only social arrangement among civilised men, nor 
proved by reasoning, or experience, to be incontrovertibly the 
best for the general wellbeing of a community. This is 
perverting education to the most despicable end — the support 
of a political system. Other social arrangements than the feudal 
do exist in civilised countries. Religion, morality, and social 
wellbeing flourish in those countries, as well as in the countries 
feudally constituted. To enlist the passions or prejudices of 
mankind by education into a partisanship for one or the other 
constitution of society, to inculcate the sacrifice of moral duty, of 
natural sentiment, of the highest affections and feelings of human 
beings, for the support of one or the other social arrangement on 
account of its real or supposed expediency, is unsound doctrine. 

The condition of Ireland, divided and subdivided among a 
small tenantry, whose savings, be it remembered,, by wretched 



30 DIFFERENT CONDITION OF SMALL PROPRIETORS. 

diet, lodging, and raiment, and the privation of every comfort 
of civilised life, is a saving which -goes in the shape of high rent 
into the pockets of another class, the landowners, not into their 
own pockets, as the gains of their frugality, to be added to their 
property, or means of expenditure, was, and still is, the grand 
bugbear of our Scotch political economists, and still furnishes the 
main argument against the distribution of landed property 
through the social body, by the natural and moral law of succes- 
sion. They did not, and do not at present consider the some- 
what important difference of people being the owners or not the 
owners of the land divided. The belly is too faithful a 
counsellor to the head, to allow a man to sit down to live upon a 
piece of land of his own, if it be not large enough to support him 
in the way he has been accustomed to live. He turns his pro- 
perty into another shape — into money, and makes a living out 
of it as a tradesman. Between the condition of such a landowner, 
and an Irish cottar-tenant, there is the important difference, that 
the former has a capital which he may keep in land, or invest in 
leather or sugar ; he may be a peasant, or a shoemaker, or a 
grocer, according to his judgment, and if he lives merely upon 
potatoes and water, what he spares is increasing his capital, and 
means of gratification in some other shape. The Irish cottar-tenant 
has no property to [begin with, in the land or in anything else. 
He is, and his whole class, in consequence of the working of the 
law of primogeniture in society, pauper ah initio ; and all that 
is spared by his inferior condition, in respect of the comforts and 
necessaries of life, goes into his landlord's pocket, in the shape of 
rent, not into his own as the savings of his own prudence and fru- 
gality. He is also placed in a false position by the landholders 
of Ireland, even as compared to the cottar-tenantry which 
existed formerly, all over Scotland, and still continue in the 
northern counties. The latter were generally charged a rent in 
kind, that is, in a proportion of the crops produced, or with a 
reference to the average crops of the land. The peasant could 
understand the simple data before him. knew at once whether 
the land could produce enough to feed his family and. leave a 
surplus such as was demanded for rent, and, if not, he sought a 
living in some other employment. His standard of living was 
not deteriorated by his rent in kind, because he had a clearly 
seen surplus of the best as well as of the worst of the products 
of his farm for family consumption, after paying the portion of 
these products that were his rent. The Irish small tenantry, on 



MOSEY REST. REST IN PECEUCE. 31 

the contrary, have to pay for their land in money. It would 
be just as reasonable to make them pay for their land in French 
wines for the squire, or Parisian dresses for the lady. Their 
land produces neither gold, nor silver, nor Irish bank-notes. It 
is not reasonable to make the peasant, the ignorant man, pay in 
those commodities — they are but commodities like wines and silks 
— and to make men, simple, inexperienced in trade, and a prey to 
market-jobbers, to run the double mercantile risk of selling their 
own commodities, and buying those in which their landlords choose 
to be paid their rents. The great capitalist-farmer may choose to 
add the trade of the corn-merchant to that of the agriculturist, and 
to take the mercantile as well as the agricultural risks and profits 
upon himself ; but even the shrewdest of this class, the great farmers 
of the south of Scotland, are dropping, as fast as they can, this 
mercantile branch of farming business, and coming back to the 
natural principle of farming, that of paying for their land a pro- 
portion of what the land produces, so many bolls of grain per 
acre — throwing upon the laird the risk which, in reason and 
common- sense, ought to devolve upon him, that of turning 
his share of the produce raised by the farmer's labour, skill, and 
capital, out of his acres, into gold or bank-bills. 

Money rent deteriorates the condition of a small tenant in two 
ways. The more honestly he is inclined, the more poorly and 
meanly he must live. He must sell all his best produce, his 
grain, his butter, his flax, his pig, and subsist upon the meanest 
of food, his worst potatoes and water, to make sure of money for 
his rent. It thus deteriorates his standard of living. He is also 
tempted by money-rent out of the path of certainty into that of 
chance. It thus deteriorates his moral condition. Ask him six 
barrels of oats, or barley, or six stones of butter, or flax, for a 
piece of land which never produced four, and his common-sense 
and experience guides him. He sees and comprehends the 
simple data before him, knows from his experience that such a crop 
cannot be raised, such a rent cannot be afforded, and he is off to 
England or America to seek a living. But ask him six guineas 
per acre for a piece of land, proportionably as much over-rented 
as the other, and he trusts to chance, to accident, to high market 
prices, to odd jobs of work turning up, to summer or harvest 
labour out of the country — in short, he does not know to what ; 
for he is placed in a false position, made to depend upon chance 
of markets, and on mercantile success and profits, as much as 
upon industry and skill in working his little farm. 



32 FALSE AXIOMS IN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 

In all those respects the condition of the small tenant, an J 
that of the small proprietor, are so totally different, that our 
political economists reason upon false data, when they conclude 
that a country divided among small proprietors must necessarily 
present, or fall into, the same evils in the social condition of the 
people, as a country occupied by a small over-rented tenantry. 

They set out, also, in their speculations, with a false axiom. 
They admit that a certainty of subsistence — food, fuel, clothing, 
and lodging, being all comprehended under this term, subsis- 
tence — is the first and greatest good in the physical condition 
of an individual or of a society; and they assume it as an axiom, 
that those parts of a social body, those individuals or classes, 
who are employed in producing articles of general use or desire 
among men — to put the case in the strongest light, say black- 
smiths, tailors, shoemakers, and such classes as produce articles 
which every individual in the community requires and uses, — ■ 
are as near to this first and greatest good of a certain subsistence 
by their work, as those immediately employed in its production 
by husbandry. Now this may be true, where husbandry is a 
manufacture, as with us in Britain, for producing by hired 
labourers the greatest quantity possible of grain, meat, and 
other products out of the soil, to be exchanged against the 
products of other branches of industry. It may be true that 
the hired labourers of the manufacturer of corn from land are 
no nearer to a certainty of subsistence than the hired labourers 
of the manufacturer of cloth or leather. But it is not true, 
where husbandry is followed as in France, and in the countries 
divided among a small proprietary, for the sake of subsisting the 
husbandman himself, the actual labourer on the land, as its first 
object ; and where the exchanging its products for other articles, 
even of general use and necessity, is but a secondary object. A 
man will not give up his needful food, fuel, clothing, or lodging, 
to gratify even his real and most pressing wants of iron- work, 
leather- work, or cloth- work. His surplus only will be applied 
to acquiring those secondary necessaries of life ; and those who 
live by making them are, consequently, far from being go near 
to that first good in social condition, a certain subsistence, as he 
is. But if two-thirds of the population of a country be in the 
situation of this individual, who has his certain subsistence out 
of his own land, by his own labour, and depends upon no man's 
surplus for his own needful food, fuel, clothing, and lodging, I take 
that to be a good state of society, a better arrangement of the 



SMALL FARMS. AGRICULTURE. 33 

social structure, than where needful subsistence is not certain to 
the great majority of its numbers. It carries, moreover, within 
itself, a check upon over-population, and the consequent deterio- 
ration of the social condition, and which is totally wanting in 
the other social system. In even the most useful and necessary 
arts and manufactures, the demand for labourers is not a seen, 
known, steady, and appreciable demand • but it is so in hus- 
bandry under this social construction. The labour to be done, 
the subsistence that labour will produce out of his portion of 
land, are seen and known elements in a man's calculation upon 
his means of subsistence. Can his square of land, or can it not, 
subsist a family ? Can he marry, or not ? are questions which 
every man can answer without delay, doubt, or speculation. It 
is the depending on chance, where judgment has nothing clearly 
set before it, that causes reckless, improvident marriages in the 
lower, as in the higher classes, and produces among us the evils 
of over-population : and chance necessarily enters into every 
man's calculations, when certainty is removed altogether ; as it 
is, where certain subsistence is, by our distribution of property, 
the lot of but a small portion, instead of about two-thirds of the 
people. 

Another axiom taken up as granted, and as quite undeniable, 
by our agriculturists and political economists, is, that small 
farms are incompatible with a high or perfect state of cultivation 
in a country. In the same breath they recommend a garden-like 
cultivation of the land. Pray what is a garden but a small 
farm] and what do they recommend, but that a large farm 
should be, as nearly as possible, brought into the state of 
cultivation and productiveness of a garden or small farm ? This 
can only be done, they tell us, by the application of large capitals, 
such as small farmers cannot command, to agriculture : let us 
reduce these grand words to their proper value. Capital 
signifies the means of purchasing labour ; the application of 
capital to agriculture means the application of labour to land. 
A man's own labour, as far as it goes, is as good as any he can 
buy, nay, a great deal better, because it is attended by a per- 
petual overseer — his self-interest — watching that it is not wasted 
or misapplied. If this labour be applied to a suitable, not too 
large, nor too small area of soil, it is capital applied to land, 
and the best kind of capital, and applied in the best w T ay to a 
garden-like cultivation. A garden is better dug, and manured, 
and weeded, and drained, and is proportionably far more pro- 

C 



34 SMALL FARMS. — PRODUCTIVENESS. 

ductive than a large farm, because more toil and labour, that is, 
more capital is bestowed upon it, in proportion to its area. A 
small farm, held not by the temporary right of a tenant, and 
under the burden of a heavy rent, but by the owner of the soil, 
and cultivated by the labour of his family, is precisely the 
principle of gardening applied to farming \ and in the countries 
in which land has long been occupied and cultivated in small 
farms by the owners — in Tuscany, Switzerland, and Flanders — 
the garden-like cultivation and productiveness of the soil are 
cried up by those very agriculturists and political economists, 
who cry down the means, the only means, by which it can be 
attained universally in a country — the division of the land into 
small, garden-like estates, farmed by the proprietors. It is 
possible that the family of the small proprietor-farmer consume 
almost all that they produce, and have very little surplus to 
send to market \ but that merely affects the proportions of the 
population engaged in producing food, and in producing objects 
to be exchanged for food. The produce supports the same 
number of human beings — every potatoe finds a mouth — 
whether the whole of it belongs to one man, who sells it for the 
labour and productions of the rest of the number, or belongs in 
small portions to the whole. The traveller who considers the 
prices, supplies, and varieties of agricultural food in the market 
towns in Flanders, France, Switzerland, and the liberal use, or, 
more correctly, the abundance and waste in the cooking and 
housekeeping of all classes in those countries, w^ill scarcely 
admit even, that in proportion to the number of the whole 
community not engaged in husbandry, a smaller surplus for 
their consumpt is sent to market by the small farmers. It 
cannot be denied that a minute division of the land into small, 
free, garden -like properties, seems, a priori, more favourable to 
a garden -like cultivation of a country than its division into vast 
baronial estates, and the sub-division of these into extensive 
farms, on which the actual husbandmen, as a class, are but hired 
labourers, having no interest in the productions of the soil, and 
no-object in their work but to get the day over. 

How stand the statistical facts that bear upon this important 
question ? It is stated by Dupin, that the amount of arable 
land at present in France is but little more than it was in 1789, 
but that the population is increased by about' eight millions ; 
and inconsequence of the division of property by the law of 
succession, that one-half of the whole population are proprietors, 



EFFECTS IN FRANCE OF THE PARTITION OF LAND. c5 

and, counting their families, two-thirds of the whole are engaged - 
in the direct cultivation of the soil. It will not be said by the 
iaost strenuous advocate of those feudal arrangements of society 
which the French revolution annihilated in France, that the 
French people now are worse fed, worse clothed, worse lodged, 
or less generally provided with the necessaries, comforts, and 
luxuries of life, than they were before 1789, before the revolu- 
tion, when Arthur Young described the wretched condition of 
the people. The imports and consumpt of the tropical products 
in France prove how superior, beyond all comparison, is the 
present state of the people. Now, how is this additional popu- 
lation of eight millions of individuals fed frcm the same extent 
of arable land, if not by their superior cultivation of that land '? 
The same extent of arable land is supporting about one-third 
more people — for the population of France was then reckoned 
about 25 millions, and now about 33 millions — and in greater 
abundance and comfort. How is this, if the land is not in a 
inore productive cultivation, under the present division into 
small properties 1 It is evident from the statistical facts, that 
without any noticeable improvement in the modes, rotations, or 
utensils of husbandry, the mere subdivision of the area to which 
labour is applied into small-property-farms, cultivated in a 
garden-like way, and the converting the labour formerly applied 
to the same area, from hired labour, or perhaps unpaid labour of 
serfs, into the labour of proprietors working on their own land, 
are sufficient to account for a more garden-like cultivation and 
productiveness of the same extent of arable land. Two genera- 
tions of adults, or fifty years, have passed away under the 
deteriorating effects of the partition of land, denounced by 
Arthur Young, in 1789, as even then, "the greatest source of. 
misery that can be conceived." This greatest conceivable source 
of misery has not diminished the population, nor made it more 
miserable. This partition and repartition of land has not reduced 
all estates to one minimum size, like an Irish cottar's acre. 
Estates of all sizes and values, from £500 to £50,000 in price, 
re to be found on sale in France, as in England. The aggre- 
gation of land by deaths of co-relatives, balances the partition of 
land by deaths of parents. The application even of great 
capitals, and scientific skill to objects of husbandry, has not 
been impeded by this partition of land. The capital, for 
example, laid out in France in establishments for making beet- 
root sugar, is greater, perhaps, than has been laid out in Britain' 



36 EFFECTS IN FRANCE OF THE PARTITION OF LAND. 

during the same period, on any one agricultural object. The 
thing itself, the making sugar from beet-root, as an agricultural 
operation in modern husbandry, may be impolitic, if such sugar 
can only be made under protecting duties, and if sugar can be 
got cheaper, and without slave labour, from the West Indies — -a 
point not at all ascertained ; but the value of the fact for our 
argument remains the same. A beet-root sugar work requires 
science, skill, expensive machinery, and very considerable capital. 
Hydraulic presses of the best construction to express the juice, 
and steam engines to pump it up, are not rare in beet-root 
sugar works. I have visited one in the Pas de Calais, in which 
the presses and engines had been made in London for the work, 
at a time when we scarcely knew that such an agricultural object 
existed, and was carried on so near us. At present, that is, in 
184 i, France has 389 beet-root sugar works in activity, although 
no longer favoured or protected by any unequal duty on colonial 
sugar ; and from January 1840 to the- end of May 1841, these 
have delivered to the consumpt of the country 26,174,547 
kilogrammes, or 5,234,909 cwt., which have paid in duty to the 
revenue 3,205,783 francs. The total consumpt of France yearly 
appears to be about 16,518,840 cwt. of sugar. , : It may perhaps 
be a question whether in all England, south of Trent, there can 
be found so many threshing machines of the best and most ex- 
pensive construction — such as cost from £800 to £1200, in the 
best agricultural districts of Northumberland, Roxburghshire, 
and the Lothian s — as France, under her partition law of suc- 
cession, can produce of these complicated, and far more expensive 
establ ishmen t s. 

The social effects of the partition of property upon the con- 
dition of the people, as well as the economical effects on their 
agriculture, are very wide of those preconceived and predicted. 
What has been the march of society under this law since 1816, 
when France first began to enjoy it in a settled state of peace ? 
In the first seven or eight years after 1816, all society had still 
a martial air and habit. The soldier was everything and every- 
where. Boys would strut about, and have you believe that they 
had seen fire at Montmartre, or, at the least, had been with the 
army of the Loire. For the first three or four years, France 
was one great camp of disbanded soldiers, swaggering and idling 
about, in town and country. The small proprietors had noc 
.confidence in the security of their portions of confiscated 
domains of the church, or of the emigrant noblesse, and had not 



EFFECTS IN FRANCE OF THE PARTITION OF LAND. 37 

the means or courage to improve them. The predictions of our 
political economists, seemed hastening to fulfilment. But in 
the next period of six or eight years, a change came over the 
spirit of the land. The military mania abated. On se lasse de 
tout, especially in France. The soldier was in the back-ground. 
The vieux militaire was voted a tiresome, old, stupid bore. 
Idlers of the middle and lower classes were evidently diminish- 
ing in numbers and importance. The young men you met with 
in the diligence, or at the table d'hote, were no longer billiard- 
table loungers and half-pay officers, but sons of proprietors from 
the south, selling their wines in the northern departments, or of 
merchants and manufacturers from the north, extending their 
business in the south. Industry was evidently on the move. 
Houses were in building in every village. The small land- 
owners had acquired means and confidence, and were beginning 
to lodge themselves on their little estates. Prices, profits, 
speculations, undertakings, establishments in business, engrossed 
all conversation among all classes. Now, in the last period of 
seven or eight years, the French are passing from a military to 
an industrious people, as rapidly as such a change in the spirit 
of so vast a mass of population so lately military can be expected. 
This change in the spirit of a nation cannot be rapid, because 
there is at first an under supply of commercial and manufacturing 
means, and objects, to employ the activity and restlessness of 
mind reared in military habits ; and the government, un- 
fortunately, agitates for military pre-eminence in Europe, instead 
of favouring the advance of peaceful habits in the population; 
but the change evidently is in progress, is advancing, is far ad- 
vanced, and all France is undoubtedly alive with an industry, 
and a commercial manufacturing spirit, unknown at any former 
period of her history. 

The condition of the French people as to food, clothing, and 
the comforts of life, compared to their condition before 1789, is 
undoubtedly better. What is the condition of their labouring 
class at present, compared to that of our own 1 The only means 
of comparison is to take one class of men, whose condition is in 
all countries the same, relatively to that of the common labourer, 
the military — and to compare the condition of the common 
labourer in each country, with that of the common soldier. 
Now in England, since 1816, no bounty, or very trifling bounty, 
is required to obtain recruits for the army ; and none but men 
of the best description as to age, health, and stature, are received. 



38 EFFECTS OF THE PARTITION OF LAND IN FRANCE. 

The inference to be made is, that the condition of our common 
soldier is so much better than, or so equal to, the condition of 
our common labourer, that little or no inducement of bounty is 
required to make able-bodied men enlist in sufficient numbers. 
But the condition of our soldier has not been altered for the 
better since the peace, since 1816. It is the condition of our 
labouring class that has altered for the worse. In England, as 
in France, the soldier is fed, paid, lodged, and clothed, precisely 
as he was five-and-twenty years ago. But in France, although 
the term of service is only for six years, so far are the labouring 
class from such a condition as to enlist without the inducement 
of bounty, that from 1800 to 2000 francs, or £80 sterling, is usually 
offered for a recruit to serve as a substitute for one who is drawn 
by ballot for the army. Clubs and assurance companies are es- 
tablished all over France for providing substitutes for the mem- 
bers who may happen to be drawn for service. The inference to 
be made is, that here the condition of the common labourer is 
too good to be exchanged for that of the common soldier without 
the inducement of a premium ; his labour too valuable to be 
given for the mere living and pay of the soldier, although the 
soldier's pay and living are as good, in proportion to the habits 
of the people and price of provisions as in England. 

How ludicrous, as one sits on the deck of a fine steam-vessel 
going down the Saone, or the Rhone, or the Seine, passing 
every half hour other steam -vessels, and every five or six miles 
under iron suspension bridges, and past canals, short factory 
railroads even, and new-built factories — how laughable, now, to 
read the lugubrious predictions of Arthur Young half a century 
ago, of Birbeck quarter of a century ago, of the Edinburgh 
Keview some twenty years ago, about the inevitable conse- 
quences of the French law of succession ! " A pauper warren !* 
Look up from the page and laugh. Look around upon the 
actual prosperity, and well-being, and rising industry of this 
people, under their system. Look at the activity on their 
rivers, at the new factory chimneys against the horizon, at the 
steam-boats, canals, roads, coal works, wherever nature gives any 
opening to enterprise. France owes her present prosperity, and 
rising industry, to this very system of subdivision of property, 
which allows no man to live in idleness, and lio capital to be 
employed without, a view to its reproduction, and places that 
great instrument of industry and wellbeing, property, in the 
hands of all classes. The same area of arable land, according to 



FRENCH CHARACTER. 39 

Dupin, feeds now a population greater by eight millions, and 
certainly in greater abundance and comfort^ than under the 
former system of succession ; because now its produce is applied 
to feeding reproductive labourers, who, either in husbandry on 
their own little estates, or in manufactures, or trade, are produ- 
cing, while they are consuming, what brings back either con- 
sumable produce, or the value of what they consume in due 
time. But the produce applied to the feeding of soldiery, of 
labourers employed by a splendid court in works of mere osten- 
tation and grandeur, in building palaces, or constructing magni- 
ficent public works of no utility equivalent to the labour 
expended, and, to a certain extent, even in the fine arts, and, 
above all, in supporting a numerous idle aristocracy, gentry, 
and clergy, with their dependent followers, was a waste of 
means, a consumpt without any corresponding return of con- 
sumable or saleable produce from the labour or industry of the 
consumers. In this view, the comparison between the old 
feudal construction of society in France, and the new under the 
present law of succession, resolves itself into this result, — that 
one-third more people are supported under the new, in greater 
abundance and comfort, from the same extent of arable land, in 
consequence of the law of succession having swept off the non- 
productive classes, forced them into active industry, and obliged 
all consumers, generally speaking, to be producers also, while 
they consume. In this view, the cost of supporting the old 
court, aristocracy, gentry, clergy, and all the system and arrange- 
ments of society in France, under the ancient regime, has been 
equivalent to the cost of supporting one-third more inhabitants 
m France, and in greater comfort and wellbeing ; and this is 
the gain France has realized by her revolution, and by the 
abolition of the law of primogeniture, its most important 
measure. 

Let us do justice to the French character. Their self-com- 
mand, their upon-honour principle, is very remarkable, and 
much more generally diffused than among our own population. 
They are, I believe, a more honest people than the British. The 
beggar, who is evidently hungry, respects the fruit upon the 
road-side within his reach, although there is nobody to protect 
it. Property is much respected in France ; and in bringing up 
children, this fidelity towards the property of others seems much 
more carefully inculcated by parents in the lowest class, in the 
home education of their children, than with us. This respect for 



40 HONESTY. — EDUCATION. — MANNERS. 

the property is closely connected with that respect for the feel- 
ings of our neighbours, which constitutes what is called good 
manners. This is carefully inculcated in children of all 
ranks in France. They are taught to do what is pleasing 
and agreeable to others. We are too apt to undervalue this 
spirit, as tending merely to superficial accomplishments, to 
empty compliment in words, and unmeaning appearance in acts. 
But, in reality, this reference to the feelings of others in all we 
do, is a moral habit of great value where it is generally diffused, 
and enters into the home training of every family. It is an 
education both of the parent and child in morals, carried on 
through the medium of external manners. Our lower and 
middle classes are deficient in this kind of family education; and 
there is some danger that the parents in those classes may come 
to rely too much with us, for all education, upon the parish and 
Sunday schools. It is but reading, writing, reckoning, and the 
catechism, after all, that can be taught a people by the most 
perfect system of national school education ; and those acquire- 
ments would be dearly bought if they interfere with, or supersede 
family instruction and parental example, and admonition in 
the right and wrong, in conduct, morals, and manners. It is a fine 
distinction of the French national character, and social economy, 
that practical morality is more generally taught through 
manners, among and by the people themselves, than in any 
country in Europe. One or two striking instances of this general 
respect for property have occurred to me in travelling in France. 
I once forgot my umbrella in a diligence going to Bordeaux, in 
which I travelled as far as Tours. My umbrella went on to 
Bordeaux, and returned to Tours in the corner of the coach, 
without being appropriated by any of the numerous passengers, 
or work people, who must have passed through it on so long a 
journey, and have had this stray unowned article before them. 
I once travelled from Paris to Boulogne with a gentleman who 
had come up the same road a few r days before. We were con- 
versing on this very subject, the honesty of the people in general, 
and he recollected having left on the table of one of the inns half 
a basket of grapes, w^orth about 12 sous, which, he said, he was 
sure he would find safe. On arriving, he asked the waiter if he 
had seen the grapes, and they were instantly produced, as a mat- 
ter of course, out of a press in which they had been carefully put 
away as property not belonging to the house. It is the great 
diffusion and exposure of property in small things, among a natiou 



SOCIETY EDUCATES ITSELF IN MORALS. 41 

of small proprietors, that produce this regard for its safety even 
in trifles, this practical morality. It is not the value lost, but 
the injury to the feeling of ownership, which constitutes the 
criminality, or rather the injury, in many petty aggressions on 
property; and respect for the feelings of others enters into the 
manners and morals of the French. 

Society left; to itself will, probably, always work itself up to 
its moral wants. The moral condition of France, from 1794 to 
1816, had certainly no aid from the clerical, educational, civil, or 
military establishments of its government, or from the wars and 
tumults in which the country was engaged ; yet countries blessed, 
during all that period, with the fullest, most powerful, and best 
endowed church establishments, as part of their government, may 
envy the moral condition of the great mass of the French people. 
The social economist, w T ho looks at France, and at the United 
States of America, will pause before he admits in its fullest extent 
the usual clerical assumption, that a powerful church establish- 
ment, and an union of church and state, are essential to the mo- 
rality, piety, or education of a people. Pie will be apt to conclude, 
that society left to itself will provide according to its wants, and 
to its recipient capabilities, for education, morals, and religion 
— that these must grow naturally out of social circumstances, 
and cannot be forced by establishments, clerical or educational, 
into any wholesome existence — and that a people will no more 
fall into barbarism, or retrograde in civilisation, from the want 
of establishments suitable to their social condition, than a family 
will turn cannibals from wanting a butcher's shop or a cook. 

It is nearly half a century since the decimal division of money, 
weights, and measures was adopted by the French Convention, 
and by every succeeding government it has been adhered to, and 
enforced by law. The learned in all other countries, as well as 
in France, are unanimous in recommending its adoption, on ac- 
count of the greater practical facility in operations and accounts, 
of the decimal than the duodecimal division of weights, measures, 
and money; yet, in spite of law and science, the French people 
continue to use the duodecimal division. They persist in thinking 
duo decimally, even when by law they must express themselves 
decimally. Is this obstinate adherence to the least perfect and 
most difficult mode of reckoning quantity, or value, in the or- 
dinary affairs of life, the effect of mere prejudice, of blind custom, 
of the perversity, in short, of the public mind ? I suspect the 
cause lies deeper. Prejudice, custom, or perversity, will not make 



42 DECIMAL DIVISION OF WEIGHTS AND MEASURES. 

people forego a clear advantage. Men of science and legislators, in 
recommending and adopting the decimal division, have considered 
only the arithmetical operations to be performed with numerals ; 
but not the nature of the subjects to which those operations with 
numerals are applied. Weights, measures of capacity or of ex- 
tension, and money, are measures applied to the products of nature, 
or of human industry, and to their value in exchange with other 
products through the medium of money. Now the value of the 
products either of nature, or of art, is the time and labour involved 
in them. The value of the most valuable of natural products, 
the diamond, has the same base as the value of a pin, — it is the 
value of scarcity; that is to say, of the time and labour it would 
cost to find such another diamond, or to make such another pin. 
The value of those two elements — time and labour — is what we 
buy, and sell, and record in our accounts, and to which all measure- 
ment of quantity with a reference to value, and all reckoning in 
the ordinary transactions of life, refer. One of these two elements 
— time — regulates, in a considerable degree, the value of the other 
—labour — and is the usual measure of it. It is the time em- 
ployed by which we measure the work done, and estimate its 
value in ordinary affairs. But time is divided by nature duodeci- 
mally not decimally. The four seasons, the twelve months of a 
year, the four weeks in a month, the twenty-four hours in a day, 
the twelve working hours, the hours of light and darkness, the 
six working days in a week, are partly natural divisions of time 
connected with changes in our planetary position, and partly con- 
ventional, such as the number of working hours in a day, or of 
working days in a week, but derived from the natural divisions, 
and all are duodecimally divided. Labour being estimated by 
time, and time divided duodecimally, the products of time and 
labour — that is to say, all that men buy, sell, use, or estimate in 
reckoning — are necessarily and properly measured by weights, 
measures, or money, also duodecimally divided ; so that parts of 
the one correspond to parts of the other. To measure or pay in 
decimals what is delivered in duodecimals, is not an easy or 
natural process; although, apart from all consideration of what 
numerals are applied to, and in more abstra'ct operations with 
them, the decimal system is unquestionably the most easy and 
perfect to reckon by. To pay one hour's work, or two hours' 
work, of a day divided into twelve working hours, out of money 
divided duodecimally, is an easy process — or to measure the pro- 
duct of time and work by measures of quantity also duodecimally 



DECIMAL DIVISION OF WEIGHTS AND_ MEASURES. 43 

divided ; but to measure the same by decimal weights or measures, 
or pay for the work in decimally divided money, is not a simple 
operation. It is time, in reality, which is the element bought 
and sold between man and man, if we resolve the value of pro- 
ductions to its base: and unless time is divided decimally, which 
natural arrangement renders impracticable, the decimal division 
cannot be generally adopted in ordinary affairs. It would be a 
retrograde step to measure all production in which time is the 
main element of value, by one scale, and to measure time itself 
by another. It may be arithmetically right, looking only to the 
abstract operations with the numerals, to adopt the decimal di- 
vision; but it would be philosophically wrong, looking at the 
nature of the things to which the numerals are to be applied. 
A great proportion of the food of mankind, also, is divided by 
nature duodecimally. The beasts of the field and birds of the 
air happen to have generally four, not five limbs; and the butcher, 
in spite of decimals, will divide, cut, and weigh his beef and 
mutton by quarters and halves, not by five-tenths or five-twen- 
tieths of the carcass. In many of the most necessary and perpe- 
tually recurring aj^plications of weight, measure, time, labour, and 
money value, to natural objects duodecimally divided by nature, 
the decimal division is inconvenient, and therefore never will come 
into general use in France, or any where else. 



, , SOCIAL ECONOMY — • 



CHAPTER III. 

SOCIAL ECONOMY WHY NOT TREATED AS A DISTINCT SCIENCE. ARISTOCRACY 

REPLACED BY FUNCTIONARISM IN FRANCE IN GERMANY. INTERFERENCE 

OF GOVERNMENT WITH FREE AGENCY. AMOUNT OF FUNCTIONARISM IN A 

FRENCH DEPARTMENT INDRE ET LOIRE AMOUNT IN A SCOTCH COUNTY 

SHIRE OF AYR. EFFECTS OF FUNCTIONARISM ON INDUSTRY ON NATIONAL 

CHARACTER ON MORALS ON CIVIL AND POLITICAL LIBERTY. CHANGE IN 

THE STATE OF PROPERTY IN PRUSSIA. TWO ANTAGONISTIC PRINCIPLES IN 

THE SOCIAL ECONOMY OF PRUSSIA. 

Social economy — the construction of the social body of a country, 
the proportions in numbers and influence of the elements of 
which it is composed, the arrangements and institutions for the 
administration of its laws, police, and public business, civil, mili- 
tary, and ecclesiastical, and the principles on which all this 
social machinery should be constructed for working beneficially 
on the physical and moral condition of the people — is a science 
distinct from the sciences of government, legislation, jurispru- 
dence, or political economy. These are but branches of social 
economy in its most extended meaning. It embraces all that 
affects social prosperity, and the wellbeing, moral and physical, 
of the individuals composing the social body of the country. 
Although its subjects are well defined, and its objects important, 
this science is rarely touched upon by philosophers. What we 
know of the social economy of any foreign country w^e must 
gather from travels and statistical works. These give the ma- 
terials, but not the principles; the facts, but not the conclusions 
upon their causes or consequences. The political philosopher 
has never taken up these materials, or facts, and deduced from 
them the principles on which society ought to foe constructed for 
attaining the highest moral and physical wellbeing of all its mem- 
bers. The cause of this neglect may be that in Germany, the 
prolific mother of theory and speculation, it might not be very 
safe to write or to lecture upon this science; for a good social 
economy would imply social arrangements altogether adverse, 
both in principle and in operation, to the political power of the 
state over private free agency, which is the basis of all social 
institutions in Germany. The mind, too, bred amidst these 



WHY NOT TREATED AS A DISTINCT SCIENCE. 45 

slavish institutions of Germany, is itself slavish. The political 
conceptions of the German mind, as expressed at least in writings 
or conversation, are, in general, either abject to the last degree, 
or extravagant to the last degree — the conceptions of slaves, or 
of slaves run mad ; both equally distant from the sober, rational 
speculations and conclusions of free men, on the subject of their 
political and civil liberties. In England, no sudden overwhelm- 
ing revolution in property and government, since the Norman 
conquest, has forced upon the country a total reconstruction of 
her social arrangements. The power of her legislature also to 
alter, amend, or enact laws, according to exigence, or public 
opinion, and still more the nature of her jurisprudence, by which 
cases are decided and become land-marks in law, by the common 
sense of the age influencing courts and juries, and not, as in 
feudally constructed countries, by the rigid application of the 
principles of a code belonging to a different age and social con- 
dition, have removed the necessity of the English mind occupying 
itself with speculations upon the principles of the social arrange- 
ments of the country so generally, as upon the principles of its 
national wealth, of population, of pauperism, and of other 
branches of its political economy. The wants of society, as of 
the individual, are less felt, or less thought of, when the remedy 
is ready, and its application, is at all times in our own power, 
and is even going on of itself in amending obvious defects in 
social arrangemeuts. "We are only beginning slowly, and piece- 
meal, to alter and improve our social arrangements for the 
administration and execution of law and public business, for 
police, for relief of destitution, for the health and education of 
the people; and we advance from exigence to exigence as the 
occasion for interference arises, and not by a reference to, and a 
sudden change in, any general principles or established practices. 
In France new social arrangements were suddenly forced upon 
the country by the revolution. The people were enthusiastic 
for changes in the old system ; and the new arrangements were 
formed suddenly, and induced suddenly over the face of the coun- 
try, at a moment when military invasion or aggression, and civil 
disorder and anarchy, were to be apprehended and provided 
against. The principle of military power, and of the hand of 
government being applied to everything, entered of necessity, at 
this crisis, into all the new social arrangements. Although these 
were sown and reared in the hotbed of the warmest enthusiasm 
for liberty, equality, and the rights of man, and in the wildest 



46 AEISTOCRACY ON THE CONTINENT 

moments of the revolution, they have been found so veil adapted 
.to all the purposes of despotic government, that they have been 
transplanted from France into all the other continental states. 
It is not the least curious of the anomalies of modern times, that 
the whole internal social arrangements of La Republique Fran- 
chise for the administration of law, police, and civil and military 
affairs among her free citoyens, have been adopted by all the 
monarchical and arbitrary states of Europe, as the most suitable 
machinery for their governments. The cause is the same. 

The abolition of an hereditary aristocracy in France, as an 
influential power in the social structure, threw each successive 
government, under whatever power or name, republican, consu- 
lar, imperial, or monarchical, upon one principle for support — 
the influence of an extensive government patronage. It is the 
characteristic of the French mind to systematise, to carry out every 
principle to the utmost extreme of minuteness and subdivision. 
The new social arrangements for the administration of law, police, 
and public business, were carried at once to a minuteness of 
efficiency and perfection, altogether inconsistent wuth the civil 
liberty or public spirit of a people. The extreme spirit of sys- 
tem, of interference in all things, of surveillance over all things, 
required a vast body of functionarism, a civil army of public 
officials among the people ; and this influence both directly ef- 
fective, and indirectly by the beneficial employments it affords 
acting as bribes to the active, and educated in every class, has 
been the basis of the social support of every government in 
France since the revolution. 

In Germany the same cause has produced the same effect. 
The decline of aristocracy as an influential element in society, 
partly by the direct working of the Code ^Napoleon, and the par- 
tition or sale of the estates of the nobility, where the French 
occupied the country, partly and chiefly by the general advance 
of the middle class in wealth, intelligence, independence, and 
influence over public opinion, has thrown all the continental go- 
vernments upon a similar support. Aristocracy is succeeded by 
functionarism as a state power, as a binding influence between 
the people and their governments in the social structure of 
Europe. 

This mechanisation of all social duties in the bands of govern- 
ment is a demoralising influence incompatible with the develop- 
ment of industry, free agency, or public spirit. England reduced 
at the peace her civil army of tax-gatherers and government 






REPLACED BY FUNCTIONARISM. 47 

functionaries as well as her military. France kept up her 
machinery of civil establishments. The arrangements adopted 
at an early period of the revolution by the Directory have con- 
tinued augmenting rather than diminishing, under eachsuccessive 
government, and have silently spread over all the continent ; 
less, perhaps, from direct imitation or approval, than from the 
wants of all the continental governments during the war and 
since, having been the same — men and money; and the same 
arrangements which were seen to be effective in France for rais- 
ing men and money were adopted by her neighbours. The 
conscription, the passport system, the division of the country 
into departments, circles, cantons, and communes — each with its 
functionaries for civil, financial, and military affairs, — and the 
military organisation of all classes of government functiona- 
ries, and the system of government interference and sur- 
veillance in all matters, are transferred from republican France 
to monarchical or despotic Germany, and appear to have been 
equally suitable to both. 

It is in France this system should be studied, as in France it 
arose. It is a shoot from her tree of liberty, which seems to find 
something very congenial to its nature in despotic soils. 

France is divided into eighty-six departments, containing no 
less than 38,061 communes or civil parishes, in each of which 
there is a local government functionary. Taking the population 
of France in 1838 at 33,540,908 individuals, each group of 176 
families, or 881 souls, has one public functionary, exclusive of 
policemen, tax-gatherers, <fca, among them, for administration or 
execution of governmental business. Besides the inferior local 
functionaries, who are expectants upon higher places and emolu- 
ments, a group of communes forms a canton, a group of cantons 
an arrondissement, a group of arrondissements a department ; and 
each of these groups has its superintending and revising colleges 
of functionaries for the administrative, executive, ani financial 
duties. 

The great social problem of this age is, to what extent should 
the hand of government interfere in matters which directly or 
indirectly affect the public ? Should superintendence and sur- 
veillance be extended over all matters in which the public can 
by any possibility be affected ? or should all such matters be 
left entirely to private free agency and judgment ; government 
interposition being the exception, not the rule, and exerted onlp 
in the rare cases in which private interests acting against the 



48 FUNCTION ARISM IN FRANCE. 

public good, are unopposed by other private interests. The 
same question, under another name, is that of centralisation in 
our social system in Britain, of the administration of law, police, 
and local business, in which the whole community is interested, 
such as the charge of roads, of the poor, of education, of criminal 
prosecution — in the hands of the general government, and of its 
paid magistrates and functionaries — or leaving them, as hereto- 
fore, in the hands and under the management of the people 
themselves. 

In this important question in social economy — upon the final 
and practical solution of which the future shape of society, and 
the amount of civil liberty enjoyed by the people of Europe 
mainly depend, the English nation stands at one end of the line, 
with their descendants on the American continent, and Prance 
and Prussia with all the imitative German states, at the other. 
We understand, more or less, our own social economy in Great 
Britain, and the general principle of non-interference of govern- 
ment, unless in rare exceptive cases on which it rests ; but we- 
are generally ignorant of the social economy of the continent, of 
the amount of government interference and superintendence car- 
ried into affairs which are conducted with us by the private 
interests or public spirit of individuals, and of the effects on the 
industry, civil liberty, and moral condition of the people, by the 
limitation of individual free-agency, and the intermixture of 
government functionarism in all the acts and duties of private life. 
Every traveller is struck with the numbers and military organi- 
sation of the civil functionaries in the pay of government, whom 
he meets at every step on the continent. It is, perhaps, the first 
feature in the different social economy of those countries which 
attracts his notice; but no traveller has given us any view of 
the amount, or any speculations on the social effects of this 
widely-spread functionarism. 

I shall endeavour to point out the numbers of government 
functionaries in a given population in France, in order to obtain 
an approximation, at least, to the amount of this power in their 
social economy. 

In 1830, the population of France is stated at 31,851,545 
souls, which would give an average of 370,367 souls in each de- 
partment. The chief towns of the eighty-six departments — 
that is, the towns in which the departmental courts and establish- 
ments are seated, contain together 2,273,939 souls, which allows 
on an average a population of 26,441 souls to each chief town, 






FRENCH DEPARTMENT OF INDRE ET LOIRE. 49 

Now, looking for an average department, and one which could 
be easily compared with one of our counties, I find the depart- 
ment of the Indre et Loire, containing 290,160 souls, and. its chief 
town, Tours, 23,100 souls, as near an average as any; and 
it has the advantage for comparison, that at the same period, 1830, 
the shire of Ayr was in population as nearly equal to one-half of the 
population of the department of the Indre et Loire as we can 
expect, viz., the population of the county of Ayr was, accord- 
ing to the population returns, 145,055 souls, and of the county 
town, 11,626 souls, being also, as nearly as we can expect, one- 
half of the population of Tours, the chief town of the Indre et 
Loire. I take these two groups of populations, therefore, in pre- 
ference to others. Now, what number of public functionaries 
are employed by the French government in the civil affairs of 
the 290,160 people inhabiting the department of the Indre et 
Loire ? 

This department is divided into three arrondissemens — so is 
the shire of Ayr into three districts, Carrick, Kyle, and 
Cunningham ; the three arrondissemens are further divid- 
ed into 25 cantons, and the 25 cantons into 292 com- 
munes, or civil parishes : the shire of Ayr, if I mis- 
take not, reckons 46 parishes. In each of these 292 
communes, are a mayor, adjunct, and municipal council. — 
The mayor presides over the public business ; the adjunct 
acts as public prosecutor before the primary or lower local courts. 
But as the mayor and municipal council, and perhaps the adjunct, 
are not, I believe, offices paid by, although confirmed by govern- 
ment, but held by candidates expectant on the higher and paid 
offices, I do not reckon them, amounting to 584 persons, among 
the functionaries living in government pay and service ; 
although, in as far as they are candidates for higher civil 
office, and depend on government for their future means of 
living, their influence on the social economy of the people is 
much the same as thai; of the classes of paid civil function- 
aries. Each of the 25 cantons has a primary local court, 
composed of 5 paid functionaries, making in all of paid 
officials 125. Each of the three arrondissemens is provided 
with an upper court with 10 paid officials, and that of 
the chief town with 20 clerks, officers, &c, included ; in 
all 40. Thus for the administration of justice there are 
165 persons who are paid functionaries, divided into 25 pri- 
mary local courts, and 3 superior courts for the civil and 

D 



50 AMOUNT OF FUNCTIONARISM IN THE 

criminal business of a population just about double of that of the 
shire of Ayr. For the collection of the government taxes in the 
department of the Indre et Loire, the amount of functionarism 
is : — 

Receivers of taxes '" ... 68 

Inspectors, stamp masters, registrars ... ... ... ... ... 37 

Directors and controllers of land tax 10 

Measurers of land for land tax ... ... 12 

Receivers of indirect taxes 23 

Receiver- general 1 

Treasurer } 

Persons in offices connected with receipt of taxes — in all, functionaries 152 
For the general government of this little imperium in imperio 
of a department, we have moreover : — 

Monsieur le Prefet 

Sous-prefets, one to each arrondissement 
Council of the Prefet 

Chiefs of bureaux 

Keepers of archives 

Officers of roads, bridges, and mines 
Officers of woods and waters >.. 
Officers of weights and measures... 
Officers of affairs of the mint 
Officers of the national lottery 
Officers of the post-office 



3 
3 
6 
2 
6 
6 
3 
3 
2 
26 
61 

Being 15 paid functionaries for general government, and 
' 46 paid functionaries for different branches of public busi- 
ness which government chooses to centralize in its own 
management. 

The grand total of functionarism in a district of about double 
of the population of the county of Ayr is :. — 

Paid functionaries connected with the administration of law 165 

Paid functionaries connected with receipt of taxes 152 

Paid functionaries for general government ... ... ... ... 15 

Paid functionaries for other government business 46 

Paid functionaries in all, for a population of 290,160 souls J*" 8 

and this is exclusive of the establishment of the douane or cus- 
tom-house, which in the frontier provinces has very numerous 
establishments, and even forms a regular military cordon on duty 
night and day, and exclusive of the whole executive police or 
gendarmerie who patrol the roads, and have posts all over the 
country, and exclusive of the whole establishments for the con- 
script system, and its necessary accompaniment the passport 
system, which give employment to an army of clerks and func- 



SCOTCH COUNTY OF AYR. 51 

tionaries in the bureaux in every town, and exclusive also of the 
whole educational establishment, of which the patronage is in the 
hands of government. Monsieur de Tocqueville reckons the total 
amount of functionarism in France — that is, of civil appoint- 
ments under government, at 138,000 offices, costing yearly 
200 millions of francs. Taking the population of 1830 at 
31,851,455 souls, this gives one paid functionary to every 230 per- 
sons. But this does not give a just view of the influence and ex- 
tent of the principle of functionarism in the social economy of 
France. The functionary is an adult male, with fixed income, 
and is, therefore, either head of a family or in a social position 
equivalent to the head of a family; and the figures of the popu- 
lation represent the infants, aged, infirm, and females, as well as 
the effective adult male members of the community. In a just 
view of the proportion of functionarism in the social economy of 
France, one family in every 46 lives by functionarism, and 
at the public expense ; there is one functionary family for every 
4 6 families of the people. 

Now let us reckon the amount of functionarism in the Scotch 
county of Ayr, containing, as nearly as possible, one-half of 
the population of the French department of the Indre et Loire. 
A Scotch county is selected in preference to an English, because, 
in Scotland, the feudal law, and feudal arrangements of society, 
are similar in principle to those which prevailed on the Conti- 
nent before the changes in social economy produced by the 
French revolution ; but to the social economy of England, in 
which the administration of law, the police of the country, the 
roads, the public business of every kind, are under the manage- 
ment of the people themselves, and not of the general govern- 
ment of the country, nothing analogous exists or ever existed 
on the Continent, — no social arrangements whatsoever similar 
in principle. In the English county of Suffolk, for instance, 
containing 296,317 souls, being 6857 more than the population 
of the French department of the Indre et Loire, excepting in 
the post-office department, and those of the excise, customs, and 
stamps, no public functionaries, or very few — not perhaps in all 
half-a-dozen — could be pointed out, who live by paid offices, to 
which they are appointed by the government. The unpaid 
magistracy, the unpaid constables, the unpaid sheriffs, lord- 
lieutenants, &c, do all the duties which the host of functionaries 
in France, living upon the public in the proportion of one family 
in every 46, do in this French department. Person and 



52 AMOUNT OF FCJX0TIONAUI8M. 

property are not less safe, criminal offence not more common in 
Suffolk, than in this French department of equal population. 
The moral effects, therefore, of each system on the habits and 
minds of the people must be compared, before judgment is given 
for, or against either system : that of interference, centralisation, 
and surveillance by government as in the French system ; and 
that of non-interference, and leaving all to be done by the peo- 
ple, as well as for the people, in social business, as in the English. 

But to return to the shire of Ayr. For the administration of 
law in civil and criminal affairs there are of paid functionaries : — 

The sheriff depute, the equivalent to the prefet, as an organ of 
the executive government, and with his resident substitute, the 
procurator fiscal, and the sheriff clerk with 3 deputies, the 
equivalent of the 165 functionaries living by the administration 
of law in the French department ; being 7 persons in judi- 
cial functions. 

In the collection of taxes in this county, the amount of 
functionarism appears to be : — 

Collector of taxes, surveyor, collector of county rates ... ... 3 

Distributor of stamps ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 1 

Collector and comptroller of customs ... 2 

Excise officers, collector, clerk, and supervisors ... ... ... 8 

Postmasters living entirely on salary of office, suppose one in each 

town or village, in which sheriff or justice of peace courts are held 7 

~2l 

The whole functionaries living by offices under government 
in the collection of taxes do not certainly exceed from 21 
to 25 persons, and this number is the equivalent for 152 
functionaries in a department of only double the popu- 
lation. Instead of 21 persons, the Scotch county would, 
on the French system of functionarism, have 76 persons 
living by public employment in the financial department 
of its business. To cover all possible omissions in this list 
of 21 public functionaries in a Scotch county, as from the mixed 
nature of their means of living, it would be difficult to determine 
exactly, who live entirely by public employment, and who live 
principally by the exercise of other trades or professions, but 
having some office, as postmasters, also, we shall .state them at 
from '30 to 35 individuals ; and this number certainly 
does cover all persons having their livings in a Scotch county 
by public function in the administration of law, finance, and 



SOCIAL EFFECTS OF FUXCTIONARISM. 53 

civil government, which in a French department gives 
offices and livings to 278 paid functionaries. In the 
ratio of the population 189 paid functionaries in France 
live upon the public, by doing the duties which, at the 
utmost, from 30 to 35 paid functionaries live by doing 
in Scotland. 

^ The effects upon the social condition of a people of the two 
distinct principles — that of doing every thing for the people by- 
paid functionaries and government management, in a system of 
perfect centralisation — and that of doing every thing for the 
people by the people themselves, and with as little as possible 
of government agency — have never been satisfactorily examined 
b by our political philosophers. We have tirades enough against 
the abuse of power in the hands of the unpaid magistracy of 
England, and examples enough of the abuse ; but we have no 
impartial judgment given on the advantages and disadvantages 
of the system, compared to that of a paid body of judicial func- 
tionaries. Lord Brougham has frequently insisted on the great 
social benefit of bringing cheap law and justice home to every man's 
fireside ; but that great political philosopher has never stated what 
this cheap law and justice would cost. The financial cost is not 
the principal or important cost in a system of extensive func- 
tionarism, but the moral cost, the deteriorating influence of the 
system on the industry, habits, and moral condition of the peo- 
ple. We see a tendency in our most enlightened and liberal 
statesmen — which is only held in check by the financial cost of 
indulging it — to centralize in the hands of government much of 
the public business, the local magistracy and police, the prosecu 
tion of offences, the care of the poor, the support of high roads, 
the education of the people, instead of leaving these duties to 
be, as heretofore, performed by the people for themselves. 

A few of the effects of the function a rism, which necessarily 
overspreads these countries in which governments do what it 
should be left to the public spirit or the necessity of the people 
to do for themselves, are sufficiently visible, and may assist in 
solving the question 

All this subsistence in the field of government employment, 
paralyses exertion in the field of private industry. This is an 
effect which the most unobserving traveller on the Continent 
remarks. The young, the aspiring, the clever, and the small 
capitalists in particular, look for success in life to government 
employment, to public function, not to their own activity and 



54 EFFECTS OF FUNCTIONARISM Otf 

industry in productive pursuits. With us, civil or military em- 
ployment under government is scarcely seen, is nothing in the 
vast field of employment which professional, commercial, or 
manufacturing industry throws open to all. Abroad, all other 
employments are as nothing in extent, advantage, social impor- 
tance, and influence, compared to employment under government. 
Functionarism has, in its effects on the industry and wealth of 
nations, replaced the monastic and overgrown clerical establish- 
ments of the middle ages. It was not the vast wealth of the 
Roman Catholic Church, and of its convents, monasteries, and other 
establishments, that was detrimental to the national wealth and 
prosperity of a country. These were but an additional wheel in 
the social machine. All that was received was again expended ; 
and whether a bishop or a duke, an abbot or an earl received 
and expended the income derived from the same acres, could 
make no difference in national wealth. As receivers and ex- 
penders the clerical were perhaps better than the aristocratical 
landowners, because they understood husbandry better, and 
expended their revenues in peace, in their own fixed localities, 
by which a middle class beneath them was enabled to grow up. 
Still less was it, as Voltaire and the political economists of his 
days imagined, the celibacy of so many idle monks, and nuns, 
and clergy, and the want of population by their celibacy, that 
was K injurious to the prosperity of catholic countries. The celi- 
bacy of the Popish clergy is in no other way injurious to a 
nation than that a single man can live upon less than a man 
with a family, and that, consequently, many more individuals 
can obtain a living in an unproductive profession as the clerical 
(considered economically) is, from the same amount of church 
revenue, than if all in the profession were married. Our church 
extensionists ought, in consistency, to advocate the celibacy of 
the clerical order amongst us, because the same revenues of the 
church — either of the church of England, or of the church of 
Scotland — would thereby support three times the number of 
effective clergy and in equal comfort ; the expense of a family 
being at least three times greater on an average than that of a 
single man, and it is church endowments, and not the mere dead 
stone and lime work of buildings, that are necessary in true and 
effective church extension. But it was neither the wealth, nor 
the numbers, nor the celibacy of the Popish clergy, that made 
them in the middle ages, and make them at this day in all ca- 
tholic lands, detrimental to national wealth and prosperity. It 



INDUSTRY AND NATIONAL WEALTH. 55 

was, and is, the amount of easy living, of social importance and 
influence, which the clerical employment offered, and which na- 
turally turned, exactly as functionarism on the Continent does 
at present, all the youth of abilities, and with small capitals to 
defray the expense of education, to a clerical living, instead of 
fco industrial pursuits. We see even in Scotland, in remote 
parts, that the ease with which, during the last war, clerical stu- 
dents could accomplish the little that country presbyteries 
required in studies at the university, and could slip into a kirk, 
turned away from the broad paths of worldly industry many who 
ought to have been sitting behind the loom, or the desk, and 
whose talent extended just to finding out and securing a good 
pulpit livelihood. 

Abroad the employment under government, in the pre- 
sent age, attracts to it, as the church of Home did in the middle 
ages, all the mind, industry, and capital of the middle classes, on 
whom the wealth and prosperity of a country are founded. The 
little capitals stored up in those classes are saved, not to put out 
their young men as with us, into various industrial pursuits, and 
with suitable means to cany them on, or to extend the original 
branch of business in which the family capital was acquired.but, to 
support their sons while study ingand waiting for a living by pub- 
lic function, in some of the numerous departments of government 
employment. It may be reasonably doubted if the Popish 
church, in the darkest period of the middle ages, abstracted so 
many people, and so much capital from the paths and employ- 
ments of productive industry, as the civil and military establish- 
ments of the Continental governments do at the present day in 
France and Germany. The means also of obtaining a livelihood 
in monkish or clerical function were less demoralising to the 
public mind and spirit ; for some kind of intellectual superiority, 
or self-denial or sacrifice, was required, and not merely as in 
functionarism — barefaced patronage. 

National character partakes of the spirit which the main ob- 
ject of pursuit among a people produces in individuals. It is at 
the hand of government, by favour and patronage, and through 
subservience to those in higher function, that the youth of the 
Continent look for bread and future advancement. All inde- 
pendence of mind is crushed, all independent action and public 
spirit buried under the mass of subsistence, social influence, and 
honours, to be obtained in the civil and military functions under 
government on the Continent. It is to be observed, that, in time 



5$ EFFECTS OF FUNCTIONAIiISM Otf CIVIL LIBERTY. 

of peace, the military service in most foreign countries is scarcely 
different from the civil. Having no distant colonies to garrison, 
no posts in unwholesome climates to occupy, no perpetual rotation 
at home from one quarter to another, but being generally sta- 
tioned for many years in the same towns, the military act upon 
the industry of the country in the same way, and with the same 
effects, as the body of civil functionaries. Both together form a 
mass of subsistence, influence, and distinction, to be attained 
by other means than productive industry, and which smothers 
all exertion and spirit of independence in the industrial classes. 
The sturdy-minded English industrialist toils and slaves at his 
trade, to become some day an independent man, to be beholden 
to no one, to be master of his own time and actions, to be a free 
agent individually, acting and thinking for himself, both in his 
private, and, if he has any, in his public capacity or business. To 
this end he brings up his sons, and puts them out in the world 
with a trade, and with capital, if he has any, to attain this end. 
The dependence upon others for a living, the subserviency and 
seeking for favour, inherent in a functionary career, do not come 
within his sphere of action. A living by productive industry is, 
generally speaking, far more certain, and more easily obtained in 
our social system, in which military, clerical, and legal functions 
under government patronage, and a living in either of those 
blanches of public employment, are rare, and altogether out of 
reach and out of sight of the middle classes in general, forming 
no object to the great mass of the industrialist-class to breed up 
their sons to. This is the great moral basis on which the na- 
tional wealth, industry, and character of the English people rest ; 
and is the only basis which can uphold real liberty in a country, 
or a social state, in which civil liberty, as well as political, free 
agency in private life, as well as free constitutional forms of 
government, can exist. The Germans and French never can be free 
people, nor very industrious, very wealthy nations, with their pre- 
sent social economy — with their armies of functionaries in civil 
employments, extending the desire and the means among the 
classes who ought to rely upon their own independent industry 
in the paths of trade and manufacture, of earning a living in 
public function by other means than their own productive in- 
dustry. This universal dependence upon public function 
smothers at the root the growth of independent feeling, action, 
and industry. 

Political liberty, the forms of a liberal legislative constitution, 



MORALS, AND NATIONAL CHARACTER. 57 

tie Continent may obtain ,- and France has, more than once, 
obtained such a constitution as opposed a considerable, and often 
a successful, check to the measures of the executive : yet with 
all this real political liberty, the French people have as yet no 
real civil liberty ; and, in consequence of the general diffusion of 
the spirit of functionarism through society, no idea of, or feeling 
for civil liberty. The private rights of individuals as members 
of the social union are every hour infringed upon by their social 
institutions, in a way which individuals, with any just feeling 
of independence and civil liberty, and with political liberty to 
give effect and reality to their sentiments, would never submit 
to. As an instance of the state of the public mind in France, 
and indeed all over the Continent, on the rights and civil 
liberty of the individual members of society, it is matter of 
leave and licence, of passport and police regulation, for the 
native Frenchman or German to move from place to place, or 
to exercise in many countries any kind of trade, profession, or 
means of living, within his own native land. The very elector 
going from Paxis to his own home, to exercise perhaps the 
highest privilege of political liberty— his elective franchise, in 
voting for a representative to the chamber of deputies, has so 
little civil liberty, and so little idea of it, that he must apply 
for, and travel with a passport asked from, and signed by a 
government functionary. This is a caricature of liberty. It is 
liberty in chains, her charter in her hand, her paper cap of 
liberty on her head, and manacles on her feet. 

The police of the country, the security of person and property, 
are, it is alleged, better provided for by this governmental 
surveillance over, and interference in all individual movement. 
The same argument would justify the locking up the population 
every night in public jails. Good police, and the security of 
person and property, however valuable in society, are far too 
dearly paid for by the sacrifice of private free agency involved 
in this ultra-precautionary social economy. The moral sense of 
right, and the individual independence of judgment in conduct, 
are superseded by this conventional duty of obedience to office. 
Men lose the sentiment of what is due to themselves by others, 
and to others by themselves ; and lose the sense of moral recti- 
tude, and the habit of applying it to actions. A Frenchman or 
German would not think himself entitled to act upon his own 
judgment and sense of right, and refuse obedience to an order 
of a superior, if it were morally wrong ; nor would the public 



58 EFFECTS OF FUXCTIONAEIS^I ON 3IORALS, 

feeling, as in England, go along with, and justify the individual 
who, on his own sense of right and wrong, refused to be an 
instrument of, or party to, any act not approved of by his 
moral sense. The spirit of subordination and implicit obedience, 
which we isolate and confine entirely to military service, entei-s 
on the Continent into civil life. The scenes of bloodshed in 
France, under the revolutionary government, could never have 
taken place among a people bred up in habits of moral free 
agency, and of reflecting independence of individual judgment 
on action. The instruments would have been wanting in the 
tribunals. The general moral sense would have opposed the 
enactment or fulfilment of such decrees. 

. The non-interference of government in our social economy 
with individual free-agency, and the intense repugnance and 
opposition to every attempt at such interference with the 
individual's rights of thinking and acting, have developed a 
more independent movement of the moral sense among the 
English people than among the Continental. It is their dis- 
tinguished national characteristic. The individual Englishman, 
the most rude and uncivilised in manners, the most depraved in 
habits, the most ignorant in reading, writing, and religious 
knowledge ; standing but too often lower than the lowest of 
ether nations on all these points ; will yet be found a man 
wonderfully distinct, and far above the educated Continental 
man of a much higher class, in his moral discrimination of the 
right or wrong in human action, far more decidedly aware of 
his civil rights as a member of society, and judging far more 
acutely of what he terms fair play, or of what is due to himself, 
and by himself, in all public or private relations or actions. It 
is the total absence of government interference, by superinten- 
dence and functionaries, in the stream of private activity and 
industry, that has developed, in a remarkable degree, this spirit 
:>f self-government, and the influence of the moral sense on 
action among the English. It is their education. We may 
call them uneducated, because they cannot read and write so 
generally as the Scotch, the French, or the Prussian people; 
but as men and citizens they have received a practical education, 
from the nature of their social arrangements, of a far higher 
kind and value than the French, the Prussian, or even the 
Scotch can lay claim to. They are far more independent moral 
agents in public and private aflairs. 

In France and Prussia, the state, by the system of function- 



NATIONAL CHARACTER, CIVIL AND POLITICAL LIBERTY. 59 

arism, stepped into the shoes of the feudal baron on the 
abolition of the feudal system ; and he who was the vassal and 
now calls himself the citizen, is, in fact, as much restrained in 
his civil liberty, and free-agency as a moral self-acting member 
of society, by state enactments, superfluous legislation, and the 
government-spirit of intermeddling by its functionaries in all 
things, as he was before by his feudal lords. The physical con- 
dition of the people of those countries has, beyond all doubt, 
been improved by the general diffusion of property through the 
social ^mass, and has advanced to a higher state of well-being 
and comfort than with us ; but their civil and moral condition 
has not kept pace and advanced with it. They have the 
property, but their governments endeavour to retain the 
privileges which belong to property, the rights of individual 
free-agency in the moral and industrial use of it. These are 
two antagonistic powers in the social economy of the Continent. 
An unseen power called the State is held now, as it was in the 
most stringent days of the feudal system, to be the owner of all 
the materials of human industry, of all occupations, trades, and 
professions, of human industry itself, oi all the deeds and 
thoughts of each individual, of his body and soul, it may be 
truly said ; for instead of being free to do what law does not 
prohibit, he can do nothing lawfully but what law permits. He 
cannot engage in the simplest act of a free-agent in civil society 
without leave and licence, and being in some shape or other 
under the eye and regulation of this unseen proprietor of all 
earthly. He may, as in France, enjoy a considerable share of 
political liberty, that is, of a constitutional voice in the enact- 
ment of laws ; but civil liberty, the uncontrolled freedom of 
action, and of the use of property, of body, and of mind, subject 
only to the most obvious and urgent necessity of interference 
by government to prevent evil to others — is as little enjoyed by 
him in the constitutional as in the despotic state ; as little in 
Belgium or France, as in Prussia or Austria. The same 
principle of intrusion on the civil liberty of the subject pervades 
the social economy of all these states — interference is the rule, 
non-interference the exception. Yet of what value is political 
liberty, or the representative legislature, but to give and secure 
to every man the full and free enjoyment of his civil liberty ? 
A free constitution is but a platform for political adventurers 
to declaim from, if it does not bring civil liberty into the social 
economy of a country. 



60 CHANGE IN THE STATE OF PROPERTY. 

The just conclusion is, that mere changes in the forms of 
government, and in the machinery and forms of legislation, will 
not suddenly, and as a necessary consequence, change the spirit 
of the people, and that in genuine liberty, in practical civil 
liberty, in the individual freedom of action and of mind, and 
the influences of this freedom on moral, intellectual, and national 
character, the people of the Continent are but little more 
advanced now than they were under Frederic the Great, or 
Louis XIV., or ]STapoleon. They are still slaves in the spirit 
and principles of their social economy. What they understand 
by liberty, and are clamorous for, is political liberty, not civil 
liberty, the instrument of liberty without its use, the outward 
forms without the spirit in their social economy. 

But this is not always to be so. This is but the transition 
state of society just casting off the net- work of slavery in which 
the feudal system had for ages enveloped it. The vassal is now 
the proprietor, and in France at least more or less the legislator 
himself. It is his mind that is behind his social position. He 
is a proprietor without knowing the rights of property. The 
old feudal spirit still lingers in the regenerated governments and 
people ; but the seed is sown, the leaven is working. Property 
will gradually take its own place, and assume its own rights in 
social affairs. It has been widely diffused by the effects of the 
French revolution through all ranks and classes of the social 
body of France and Germany. It is not merely property in 
land, but also personal property, capital, that has been spread 
among the people, and a spirit of industry, a feeling of individual 
independer ce, has naturally accompanied this diffusion of 
property. But the rights inseparable from industry and 
property — free agency, the uncontrolled use and exercise of 
them, are retained by government as a basis for the support of 
kingly power. The principle of government when land was 
almost the only influential property in society, and that was in 
the hands of a small privileged class deeply interested in the 
support of the source from which they derived their property 
and privileges, and held them exclusively, is transferred to a 
social state, in which land is in the hands -of all, and no one 
class has any exclusive interests or rights derived from the 
crown and connected with land, to maintain. Owing to the 
natural and unextinguishable influences of property on the 
human mind, this can only do, either in France or Germany, 
until the public mind becomes educated and elevated up to its 



POWER OF PROPERTY* AND KINGLY POWER. 61 

social position, and along with the physical enjoyment and 
possession of property, claims also all that morally and 
politically belongs to the enjoyment and possession of property, 
viz., free- agency as individuals, self-government by represen- 
tative constitutions as citizens. It is evident that one and 
the same principle as a support of uncontrolled kingly power, 
cannot be found equally effective in two such totally distinct 
combinations of society, as that of all land being concentrated 
in the hands of a small privileged class closely connected 
by every tie and motive with the crown, and that of the 
general diffusion of land among a population quite uncon- 
nected with it. The very fiction of law of the crown being 
the source from which the landed proprietor derives his 
rights, falls to the ground where the right is almost universal, 
and conveys no conventional privilege attached to such property, 
and where succession by primogeniture is abolished. The crown 
attempting to retain restrictions on the use and free enjoyment 
of property, after it has lost all connection with it, is in a false 
position. 

Two distinct powers in society — the power of property and 
the kingly power — have thus, by the great convulsion of the 
French Revolution, been placed in a state of incompatible 
co-existence. They are two antagonist powers in the social 
economy of France, Prussia, and Northern Germany, two powers 
in opposition to, not in unison with each other. The rights ot 
property, the free agency of the possessor in the use and applica- 
tion of it, the moral free agency of the individuals possessing it, 
their self-government and self-management of all that affects it, 
are natural prerogatives of the possessors of property which, 
where a whole nation are the proprietors, cannot be usurped to 
support, by dint of an unnatural system of functionarism ex- 
tending over the prerogatives of property and the private rights 
of proprietors, a royal or imperial autocratic power in the 
community that has no exclusive rights or privileges now to 
bestow upon any class of proprietors. Such an usurpation of 
the rights of property, and of the natural prerogatives of pro- 
prietors, by the intrusion of functionarism into all the social 
relations, affairs, duties, and industrial movement of a people oi 
proprietors, can be no stable or very long endured arrangement 
of the social economy of a country. 

When this usurpation of the rights of property in the social 
economy of the Continent is removed, either by gradual steps or 



20 



LANDED PROPERTY BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 



by sudden convulsion, on what lias kingly power to rest 1 A 
monarchical government and a democratical distribution of the 
landed and other property cannot exist together. They are 
antagonist elements in social economy. 

The French Revolution, considered as the beginning of a 
radical, inevitable, and beneficial change in the physical, moral, 
and political condition of the European people, must be re- 
garded by the social economist as a movement only in its 
commencement. It has left the Continental population in two 
very distinctly marked divisions. The one consists of the popu- 
lations in which, with a few modifications and reforms not 
affecting the grand principle of their social economy, the old 
feudal arrangements of property, and the aristocratic basis of 
kingly power raised upon feudality, are retained. Austria is 
undoubtedly at the head of this division. The other consists of 
the populations which have adopted a new social economy in 
which the two corner-stones of feudality, primogeniture and 
hereditary privilege, are taken away, and kingly power has only 
the temporary basis of functionarism and* military force for its 
support. France is at the head of this division. The diffusion 
of property, the abolition of privilege and primogeniture, and 
the introduction of functionarism as a substitute for aristocracy 
and a basis for the support of government, are all derived from 
the French Revolution ; and Prussia entered voluntarily into the 
circle of the new social economy of this division, under the 
administration of Prince Hardenberg, in 1809. 

It was found necessary, if Prussia was to preserve a national 
existence, to give the mass of the population that interest in 
the defence of the country which was totally wanting under the 
feudal distribution of the land into noble estates cultivated by 
the forced labour of serfs. The following sketch will explain 
imperfectly the amount of change in the state of landed property 
in Prussia produced by this measure. 

Previous to 1800 landed property was, on the greater part of 
the Continent, divided into noble or baronial, and peasant, 
roturier, or not noble holdings. The former class of estates 
could only be held by nobility, and had many unjust exemptions 
from public burdens, and many oppressive privileges attached to 
them. These baronial estates, by far the greatest in extent, had 
the peasantry who were born on the land adscripti glebce; had 
a right to their labour every day for the cultivation of the 
domain ; had civil and criminal jurisdiction over them in the 



LANDED PROPERTY IN EUROPE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 63 

baronial court of the estate ; had a baronial judge, a baronial 
prison on the estate to incarcerate them, and a bailiff to flog 
them for neglect of work or other baronial offences. These 
slaves were allowed cottages with land upon the outskirts of the 
estate, and cultivated their own patches in the hoars or days 
when their labour was not required on the barony lands. They 
paid tithes and dues out of their crops to the minister, the 
surgeon, the schoolmaster, and the barony or local judge who 
resided on the estate, and was appointed by the proprietor as 
patron both of the church and of the court of the barony, but 
out of the number of examined jurists, or students of law, who 
were candidates for these local judgeships. 

This is, for the system is not abolished altogether, the great 
object of the numerous body of law students at the German 
universities. The local judge is, like the minister, with a fixed 
and comfortable salary not depending on the will of the patron, 
and he is a servant of the state revised by, and reporting to, the 
higher local judicatories, and with promotion opened to him 
from the local baronial to the higher courts of the country. 

If the serf deserted, he was brought back by the military, who 
patrolled the roads for the purpose of preventing the escape of 
peasants into the free towms, their only secure asylum, and were 
imprisoned, fed on bread and water in the black hole, which 
existed on every baronial estate, and flogged. The condition of 
these born serfs was very similar to that of the negro slaves on 
a ^Yest India estate during the apprenticeship term, before their 
final emancipation. This system was in full vigour up to the begin- 
ning of the present century, and not merely in remote and unfre- 
quented corners of the Continent, but in the centre of her civilisa- 
tion : all round Hamburgh and Lubeck for instance, in Holstein, 
Schleswig, Hanover, Brunswig, and over all Prussia. Besides 
these baronial estates with the born-serfs attached to them, there 
were Bauern Hofe, or peasant estates, which held generally of 
some baron, but were distinct properties, paying as feu duties or 
quit-rents so many days' labour in the week, with other feudal 
services and payments to the feudal superior. The acknowledg- 
ment of these as distinct legal properties not to be recalled so 
long as the peasant performed the services and payments 
est blished either by usage or by writings, was the first great 
step in Prussia towards the change in the condition of the 
peasantry. It was stretched so far as to include the serfs 
located on the outskirts of the barony, and paying daily 



64: LANDED PROPERTY IN EUROPE BEFORE THE REVOLUTION. 

labour for their patches of land, and who oi'iginally were in- 
tended by the proprietor to be his servants and day labourers 
for cultivating his mains or home farmed land, but who, by 
long usage and occupations for generations, had become a kind 
of hereditary tenants, not to be distinguished from those occu- 
pants acknowledged to be proprietors, or what we would call 
copyholders. Prince Hardenberg's energetic administration 
made all these occupants the absolute proprietors of their several 
holdings, for the yearly payment of the quit rents they had been 
paying to the baronial proprietor, and had these quit rents, 
whether paid in labour or other services, or in grain, valued by 
commissioners at fixed moderate rates, and had them commuted 
and bought up from the dominant property, under inspection of 
the commissioners, by the surrender to it of a portion of the 
l&,nd of the servient property, if the peasant had no money for 
the purchase of the redemption. This great and good measure, 
which was projected and carried into effect by Stein and Har- 
denberg in a succession of edicts, from that of October 9, 1807, 
up to June 7, 1821, is the great and redeeming glory of the 
reign of Frederic William III., and, like all great and good 
measures, was accomplished with much less difficulty than was 
anticipated. Feudality had become effete. A strong and 
vigorous exertion was necessary to give the people something to 
defend — some material interest in the country. By this 
measure, Prussia was at once covered with a numerous body of 
small proprietors, instead of being-held by a small privileged 
class of nobility. 

This revolution in the state of property was almost as great 
as that which had taken place^ in France, and it is pregnant with 
the same results and tendencies. It gave comfort, well-being, 
property, to a population of serfs. It emancipated them from 
local oppression, raised their moral and physical condition, 
gave them a political, although as yet unacknowledged, existence, 
as the most important constituent element of the social body. 
But here the Prussian Revolution has stopped short of the 
French. It gave no political liberty or influence under any 
form, no representative constitution to those to whom it had 
given clear and distinct property, and consequently the feelings, 
influences on the human mind, and the requirements which the 
possession of property brings along with it. The people^ hold 
the property, and the crown, by its system of functionarism 
and military organisation, endeavours to hold all the rights and 



CHANGE OF THE STATE OF PROPERTY IN PRUSSIA. G5 

prerogatives belonging to, and morally and socially essential to 
property, all the civil and political liberties of the proprietors of 
the count ly. 

As a necessary sequence of the emancipation of the country 
population from feudal services to the noble landowner, the 
town populations were emancipated from the restrictions and 
privileges of their feudal lords, viz., the incorporation of trades 
and burgesses. Every man became entitled to be admitted to 
the rights of burgess or citizen on paying a certain fixed sum 
(in Berlin it is thirty thalers) for his burgess ticket, and entitled, 
whether he has or has not served an apprenticeship, to exercise 
any calling or trade. This second step completed the change in the 
social economy of Prussia, and altogether obliterated its former 
character of feudality as far as regarded the people, although 
the government still clings to the feudal principle of autocracy, 
without any representation of the proprietors of the country. If 
these were small privileged classes of nobility, and incorporated 
bodies, interwoven with royalty, as under the old feudal arrange- 
ments of society, and kept by exclusive privileges and distinctions 
apart from the main body of a people, and closely united to each 
other and to the crown by every tie of interest and honour, this 
order of things might, although opposed to the spirit of the 
times, and to the gradual but great advance of society in an 
opposite direction, linger on, as in Austria and other feudally 
constituted countries, in a feeble existence, waiting the blast that 
is to overturn it. But in a whole nation of proprietors, it is a 
false social economy — an order of things too unnatural to be 
stable. 

In France, the body of proprietors possessing the land of the 
country obtained a portion at least of political liberty, a repre- 
sentation, by a part at least, of their own body in the legislature, 
and may, without any very violent convulsion, give themselves 
hereafter the civil liberty they still want, in proportion as the 
public mind becomes prepared to cast off the trammels on in- 
dividual liberty and free agency imposed by functionarism and 
government interference. Prussia has not taken this step, and 
is now in the false position of holding fast by a power which 
has no roots in the new social economy she has adopted. The 
government has cast loose the absolute kingly power -from its 
sheet-anchor, the feudal system, and is now clinging to the twig 
of functionarism to save itself from being hurried along with the 
stream of social improvement. 

E 



66 ARISTOCRACY EXTINGUISHED. 

France and Prussia should be viewed by the social economist 
consecutively. They have the same two antagonistic principles 
in their social economy, although in France the ultimate predo- 
minance of the power of property over absolute kingly power 
will not long be doubtful. Functionarism in France, enormous 
as it is, will be broken down as a state element for the support 
of kingly power, by the element of popular power demanding 
a constitution, a Chamber of Deputies. But in Prussia the 
people have no feeling for legislative power, no demand for a 
representative chamber, and are abjectly patient under the total 
want of civil and political liberty. Property, and a prodigious 
social reform have been thrust upon them by their government 
in a kind of speculation on improvement, rather than attained by 
any invincible desire of their own, or by any national struggle 
for their ameliorated social condition. All has been done for 
them, not by them; and they enjoy the physical good this change 
has brought them, like a body of emancipated slaves who 
receive their own natural rights as gifts from their former 
masters, and sit down in grateful contentment. The kingly 
power, both in Prussia and France, seems aware of its false 
position, and anxious to reconstruct an order of hereditary 
aristocracy endowed with entailed landed property and privilege, 
as a social power for the support of monarchy. But in social 
economy, as in human life, the nulla pes retrorsum is the prin- 
ciple of nature. The abolition of primogeniture, and the 
consequent diffusion of landed property through society, have 
morally, as well as tern tori ally, done away with the class of 
privileged feudal aristocracy as an influential social element in 
both countries. It would be the show, not the reality, of a 
nobility that could be re-established now in Prussia or in France. 
The social position and importance of an hereditary aristocracy 
are, besides, filled up by the new social power — the body of func- 
tionaries in the social arrangements which have sprung up from 
the ashes of the French Revolution. 



PRUSSIA CONSIDERED AS A NATION. 67 



CHAPTER IV. 

PRUSSIA. NOT CONSTITUTING ONE NATION. PRUSSIAN POLICY IN THI9 CEN- 
TURY. ATTEMPT TO FORM NATIONAL CHARACTER. WHY NOT SUCCESSFUL. 

■ MILITARY ORGANISATION OF PRUSSIA. LIABILITY TO MILITARY SERVICE OF 

ALL PRUSSIANS. SERVICE IN THE LINE. IN THE ARMY OF RESERVE. FIRST 

DIVISION. SECOND. EFFECTS OF THE SYSTEM ON THE POLITICAL BALANCE 

OF EUROPE. ITS ADVANTAGES. ITS DISADVANTAGES COMPARED TO A STAND- 
ING ARMY. ITS GREAT PRESSURE ON TIME AND INDUSTRY. — ITS INFERIORITY 

AS A MILITARY FORCE. AMOUNT OF MILITARY FORCE OF PRUSSIA. DEFECT IN 

THE CONTINENTAL ARMIES.— NON-COMMISSIONED OFFICERS. MEN. TOO DELI- 
CATELY BRED IN THE PRUSSIAN ARMY LONGEVITY OF OFFICERS. THE PRO- 
BABLE ISSUE OF A WAR BETWEEN PRUSSIA AND FRANCE. POLICY OF ENGLAND 

IF SUCH A WAR ABISE. 

The Prussians "are not nationalised by those moral influences 
which bind men together into distinct communities. They are, 
not like the English, the French, the Spaniards, a people distinct 
in character, spirit, and modes of living — a nation unamalgam- 
ated and unamalgamable with others. They have no national 
language, literature, or character; no old established customs, 
manners, traditions, modes of living and thinking, laws, rights, 
or institutions of ancient times peculiar to 3 and distinctive of 
Prussians. Their history as a nation is but of yesterday, and 
is not properly their history, but that of the sovereigns of a 
small part of the present Prussia— of Brandenburg — who begin- 
ning the world about a century ago with a margraveship of about; 
one and a half million of subjects, have, by good luck and military 
talent, gathered together a kingdom of shreds and patches of other 
countries, containing about fourteen millions of people. These 
have no national history of ancient times common to all, or to a 
majority of Prussians, and connecting the present with the past by 
feelings of veneration and hereditary attachment. Prussia has, in 
ordinary parlance, only a geographical or political meaning, 
denoting the Prussian government, or the provinces it governs 
— not a moral or social meaning. The Prussian nation is a 
combination of words rarely heard, of ideas never made, the 
population not being morally united by any common sentiment 
or spirit of nationality distinguishing them in character, mind, 
or habits, from the other German populations around them, the 



68 PRUSSIAN POLICY IN THIS CENTURY. 

Austrian, Bavarian, Saxon, or Hanoverian. The German popula- 
tions have never been distinguished by any strong spirit of 
nationality. They have always been divisible, like a flock of sheep, 
into any parcels at the pleasure of their shepherds, without 
vigorous indications of such national distinctiveness, character, 
and feelings of their own, as might render their division, and 
amalgamation with other groups, dangerous or impracticable. 
To remedy this defect in their social structure, to kindle a spirit 
of nationality, form a national character, and raise a Prussian 
nation bound together by moral influences, like the French or 
English, as well as by mere territorial and political arrangements, 
is the great under-principle which has run through all the 
domestic policy of the Prussian government in this century. 
Frederic the Great had no higher policy than to retain the ter- 
ritories he had acquired by the means which acquired them — a 
strong standing army and a military system superior to that of 
other powers. His successors adhered to the same policy; but 
the first shock with the armies of a people animated by national 
spirit dissolved the dull German delusion, that drill and discipline 
alone are sufficient in modern warfare to replace the higher 
moral influences. Germans against Germans, monarch against 
monarch, in a scramble for territory, and the people in apathy 
and indifference, and with no interest at issue, the contending 
potentates made conquests according to the number of their 
highly-disciplined troops. War was really what it was often 
compared to, a game at chess, in which the royal gamesters could 
calculate upon the powers and effect of each piece, and move. 
The French wars from 1794 to 1814 wrought a mighty change 
in this royal game, and made every cabinet of the old school 
feel, that, with national sentiment kindled by moral influences, 
no people can be subdued, ard without it none can be secure. 
The alteration in Prussia of the law and holding of landed pro- 
perty, and the subversion of the ancient feudal relations between 
the peasantry and the nobility — a change almost as great in the 
state of property, and altogether as great in the structure oi 
society, as the revolution produced in France; the new military 
system by which the people themselves became the only standing 
army; the new educational system, by which government has 
in its own hands the training of the mind and opinions of the 
public through its own functionaries; the new ecclesiastical sys- 
tem, by which the two branches of the Protestant church, the Lu- 
theran and Calvinist, are joined together, and blended into one 



THE PRUSSIAN MILITARY SYSTEM. 69 

different from both, the Prussian church ; the German custom- 
house union, or commercial league, centralising in Prussia the 
management of the commercial and manufacturing industry 
connected with the supply of the other German populations, and 
raising a Prussian dominancy over the industrial pursuits of the 
rest of Germany, are so many steps towards the one great object 
of imbuing the Prussian population with those moral influences, 
without which a population is not a nation, and on which national 
greatness, independence, and even existence, depend. To what 
extent has this great experiment been successful] this solitary 
attempt on the old continent — analogous to that which has been 
so successful on the new — to form a national character, to kindle 
a national spirit, to convert a mass of individuals of different 
origins, languages, religions, histories, laws, customs, into a 
nation. The American cement, the main ingredient in the 
American cement, is totally wanting in Prussia — freedom, the 
uncontrolled freedom of industry, property, mind, and person, 
without interference of the government by laws to the enactment 
of which the people are no party, and by a system of functionarism 
which supersedes free agency in all civil and even many do- 
mestic relations of life, and extinguishes the moral influences and 
national spirit which the government wishes to kindle, leaving the 
people a passive mass in the hands of their rulers. The Prussian 
government has taken one step, and is afraid to take the next 
which naturally and unavoidably must follow the first, and lives 
in an unavailing struggle to reconcile things irreconcilable with 
each other — a supreme interference of the state in all human 
action and opinion among her subjects, with the activity, industry, 
and prosperity, the national character, public spirit, and patrio- 
tism, which a people only attain where action and opinion are 
free and uncontrolled. 

The present military organisation of the subjects of Prussia is 
one of the most important features in the social economy of the 
Continent. It has been adopted, with more or less rigour in its 
application, by almost all the secondary European powers, and 
its principle and spirit enter into all the civil as well as the 
military arrangements of those countries, and extend an influence 
over the whole social condition of the European population, 
much more extensively than any other military system has done 
since the decay of the feudal. The system of standing armies 
which preceded it, and which still exists with us, entered but 
slightly as an element in the social economy of a country. The 



70 THE PRUSSIAN MILITARY SYSTEM. 

classes who had to furnish recruits to it either by enlistment or 
impressment, more or less concealed under the forms of a ballot, 
suffered a loss of the members thus abstracted from •civil life; 
but that was almost the only effect on the social economy of the 
mass of the population, excepting the taxation, more or less 
heavy in different countries, necessary for supporting a standing 
army totally distinct from the people. It is a singular historical 
fact, that Prussia has twice within these hundred years furnished 
the model on which almost all the other European powers have 
formed their military force, even to the most- minute details. 
The former military system of Prussia, as it was left in its highest 
perfection by Frederic the Great to his successors ; was one of 
harsh and brutifying discipline, enforced by the cudgel over 
trembling squads of serfs trained into mere movable machines. 
The first shock with the undisciplined troops of the French 
republic proved that this system was false, that humanity was 
not to be outraged with impunity in the formation of armies, 
and that mind and moral influences were superior elements even 
in modern tactics to the deadening discipline of the corporal's 
stick. The whole of the European armies formed, even to the 
shape of their buttons, upon this Prussian model, were by num- 
berless defeats totally disorganised. It is not the least of the 
benefits resulting from the French revolutionary wars, that a 
more humane spirit of military discipline, a greater consideration 
for the mind and rights of the soldier as a human being, and a 
greater dependence upon the spirit and moral influences than 
upon a forced mechanical movement, have been introduced in 
consequence of these defeats into the military system of every 
country. 

The new military system of Prussia, as established by edicts 
of 3rd September, 1814, and 21st November, 1815, has been 
adopted by almost all the secondary European powers. By this 
system* every subject between the ages of 20 and 25 years, 
without distinction of fortune, birth, class, or intended profession, 
is bound to serve as a private soldier in the ranks of the stand- 
ing army for a period of three successive years. From this 
obligation only the most obvious incapacity from bodily or 
mental defect or infirmity can excuse any individual, and that 
incapacity must be examined and admitted by the local board of 
commissioners for military affairs, whose proceedings are reported 

* Gesetze ueber die Militair Pflichtigkeit. Berlin, 1840- 



SERVICE TS THE LIXE — IX THE RESERVE. 71 

to, and watched over by, a superior provincial board, and both 
report upon every claim for exemption to the war department. 
By the construction of these boards it is impossible that favour, 
partiality, or local interest can screen any individual from his 
turn for entering the service for three years- — which turn is de- 
termined by lot, drawn by those who are between the prescribed 
years, viz., between 20 and 25 years of age — nor from serving 
his three years in that particular branch of service or regiment, 
for which, from stature, constitution, or previous occupation, he 
may be best adapted. Officers from each branch of service — of 
the guards, artillery, cavalry, and infantry — attend these boards 
at their sittings, for this selection. In order not to press too 
severely on the professions or occupations incompatible with 
such a long period of military service, certain exemptions on 
account of the social position of the individual are allowed by 
favour, and on certificate from the proper authorities, so as to 
reduce the period of service in a regiment of the line from threes 
years to one year, the individual thus favoured being at the ex- 
pense of his own clothing and accoutrements. But such exemp- 
tion is the exception, not the rule; is not matter of right, but of 
favour ; and also of political convenience, when the ranks of the 
standing army are already sufficiently full. After this service of: 
three years in a regiment of the line or standing army, the indi- 
vidual returns on leave of absence as a supernumerary, liable to 
rejoin his regiment in case of war ; but upon attaining his 26th year, 
after his three years' service, he is discharged from the lists of the 
standing army into the army of reserve, and into that division of it 
which is called erster Aufgeboths, or first for service. This is the 
real army of the country, being composed entirely of soldiers of 
three years' training, and between the ages of 26 and 32 years. 
The standing army is the formation-school for the population. One 
third of its numbers is discharged every autumn into this division 
of the army of reserve, aud replaced in spring out of the population 
by the local and provincial boards of commissioners. The army 
of reserve is called out for exercise and field manoeuvres for 
fourteen days every year, which however is sometimes extended 
to four weeks. The individual after his 32nd year is turned over 
from this first division to the second division (zweiten Aufge- 
boths) of the army of reserve. In case of war, this division 
would not take the field, but would do garrison duty, as being 
composed generally of men with families, aad more advanced in 
life, and also of half-invalids who had been found unfit for severer 



72 SERVICE IN THE LINE — RESERVE — LAND-STURM. 

duty. After his 49th year, the individual is turned over into 
the land-sturm, or levy en masse, which is only mustered or 
exercised in its own locality, and would only be called out in 
case of actual invasion, or domestic tumult. The whole land is 
thus one vast camp, the whole population one army. Every 
man, in every station of life, and in every locality, is a drilled 
soldier, who knows his regiment, his company, his squad, his 
military place in it, and appears under arms at his rendezvous 

m~jhr duty, with as little delay or confusion, and a,s complete in all 
military appointments, as a soldier of any standing army 
quartered in cantonments. The admirable precision and arrange- 
ment with which all the equipments of each portion of the army 
of reserve ate placed in convenient depots, and head-quarters 
over the country, for the inhabitants of each locality belonging 
to that force, prevent any confusion in the working of this vast 
and admirably arranged military system. Standing armies, 
composed of men enlisted, or impressed, for an unlimited period 
of service, or for a period long enough to separate them from 
the rest of society almost entirely, to detach them as a class from 
all the ties and habits of civil life, exist now only in Russia, 
Austria, France, and England. Prussia, and all the secondary 
powers, have dropped this kind of military force. In France 
six years, and in Austria eight years, are the terms of service for 
the conscript drawn by ballot for the army, and lately the period 
is extended to eight years in France; and, as far as regards the 
individual's habits and ties, this is almost equivalent to unlimited 
service. All the other European powers have organised their 
military force upon the Prussian principle; and this has imper- 
ceptibly altered most essentially their relative political importance, 
and the weight of Prussia in European affairs ; and particularly 
has become an element in the social structure, and in the political 
balance of power of the European states, of great interest to the 
political philosopher observant of those silent changes which 

i come over civilised society unremarked, until on some sudden 
crisis they produce striking effects. This national army of the 
Prussian system appears to be the cheapest, the most effective, 
and most valuable military force, a country can keep. Its 
cheapness, indeed, in proportion to its great numerical strength, 
and to the fine and efficient appearance under arms, to which 
good arrangement and discipline have brought this force in 
. Prussia, has led to the almost general adoption of the system on 
the Continent. The soldiery are only in pay during the period 



EFFECT OF THIS SYSTEM IN EUROPE. 73 

they are embodied, that is, during the three years' service in the 
line, when they may be considered as learning their military 
duty, and, afterwards, only during the few weeks yearly of army 
of reserve service, when the troops are assembled for field 
manoeuvres, in great masses, in different points of the kingdom. 
Our military men who gallop about at these grand Prussian 
reviews declare unanimously their admiration of the appearance, 
movements, manoeuvres, and military excellency of the Prussian 
army; and its drill and equipments, as well as its organisation, 
have become a model for other troops, almost as generally as 
they were at the commencement of the revolutionary war, before 
the onset of troops far less exquisitely drilled and dressed than 
the old Prussian army, settled the real value in the field of this 
parade perfection for half a century. 

This kind of military force, however, if duly weighed in all 
its bearings on the community by the political economist, will 
be found in reality the most expensive and ruinous, instead of 
the cheapest, a country can support. It is an enormous pressure, 
a ruinous tax, in reality, upon the industry of a nation — a reck- 
less waste of the property — of the time and labour which consti- 
tute the property — of the labouring and middle classes, and 
which reduces, and for ever keeps down the people, to a state of 
poverty. Look at its working among those classes. Take, for 
instance, a lad of two and twenty, who has just learnt his business 
as a carpenter, smith, weaver, or other handicraft, and then for 
three years, the three most valuable years in his life for acquir- 
ing steady habits of work, and manual dexterity and skill in his 
trade, put him into a regiment of the line in a distant part of 
the country to live the idle life of a soldier for three years, away 
from the advice or control of his friends, and without seeing or 
handling the implements of the trade he was bred to. What 
kind of operative tradesman, or head of a family, is such an 
education to produce? But after three years' service, he finds 
his way home, resumes his original trade, marries, and from 25 
to 48 years of age, that is, for 23 years, he has to give at the 
least two weeks yearly- — I believe it is more usually four weeks 
— to his army of reserve duty. Now, if we take the working 
years of such a man to be 40, that is, from 22 to 62 years of age, 
we have 14,600 4 working days in his life, including, however, 
Sundays, holidays, sickness-days, and drunkenness-days; and 
out of this gross capital of 14,600 days, this man's military 
duty of three years' service in the line, and 14 days for 23 years 



74 PRUSSIAN MILITARY ORGANISATION". 

afterwards in the army of reserve, takes away 1417 days, or 
just about 10 per cent, of his operative life. It is equivalent 
to a property tax of 10 per cent., taking the lowest data of 
calculation, upon the labour and industry of the working, 
producing classes of the nation; and observe, it is not 10 per 
cent, on the value only of the produce of the time, labour, and 
industry of the people, that is consumed by those governments, 
but one -tenth of the productive powers themselves — of the very 
time and labour of the people. Nor is this all. It is in the 
good weather half-year, in the drilling and reviewing season 
only, that many kinds of out-door labour, and many sorts of 
crafts can be carried on to advantage; and besides the greater 
severity of winter in Prussia, and generally on the Continent, 
the extent of country, and the consequent inferiority of cross- 
roads and facilities of transport, impede industry and business, 
during the bad weather half-year, to a degree unknown in our 
compact, well roaded land. The working man's time is worth 
double to him at the very season it is taken from him by his 
government for drills and parades. The system is incompatible 
with a progressive condition of a people, with any considerable 
growth of national wealth, or any extensive development of 
manufacturing industry. The, labouring man cannot raise his 
condition to the middle class ; scarcely can he gather savings for 
old age. The middle class is formed under this system of 
taxation on time and labour, not by the rise of individuals from 
the lower class, as in our social system, but by the breaking 
down of the class >above itself. The German military system, 
and the German commercial league, are at direct variance with 
each other. If the former prevail, and continue to devour the 
only basis of national wealth and prosperity — the time and 
labour of the people — the latter will linger in a forced existence, 
and gradually die away. If the latter prevail, and Germany 
become in reality a thriving, industrious, manufacturing country, 
this military system, and the whole system of interference of the 
Continental governments with the people in all their doings, 
engendered by it, must fall to the ground. Many conceive, 
theoretically, that it must be the great safeguard of the liberties 
of a country, its best protection from tyranny, that the whole 
people have arms in their hands and know how to use them. 
This may be true, if political liberty alone, that is, the form or 
constitution of a free government, be all that is understood by 
liberty, and if the people have got the forms of a free government, 



ITS ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES. 15 

"which they have not in Prussia; but if civil liberty — the right 
of every individual to the free use of his mental and bodily 
powers, and to his own free agency as a moral and social being, 
subject only to such restrictions as he himself has concurred in, 
and imposes by his own representatives, for the general good — be 
the end, and political liberty only the means, then this is not 
true of such a military organisation of a whole people. It is 
sacrificing their civil liberty — which is the great end and object 
of free institutions — for their political liberty, if they had any, 
for the defence of a share in the forms of legislation^ It is paying 
for the saddle, and leaving nothing to buy the horse. 

It is stated by a statistical writer, Jancigny, as an approxima- 
tion to the proportion of the military to the population of different 
countries, that in Russia 1 in 57 of the population is serving as 
a soldier; in Prussia 1 in 80; in Austria 1 in 118; in France 
1 in 122; and in England 1 in 320. But in this statistical ap- 
proximation, the writer forgets the most important element in it, 
as far as regards the industry, morals, and habits of a people, 
viz., that in England this 1 represents a whole military genera- 
tion. As long as this 1 lasts, the 320 do not furnish another 1 
to fill his place as a soldier, and when they do, it is 1 who can 
be spared, whose social condition allows him to enlist. In 
Russia it appears to be the same — the 1 represents a whole 
military generation. In Austria and France, the 1 represents 
8 years, and 6 years respectively, during which periods the 1 is 
not replaced out of the body of the community; and as, after 
6 or 8 years of military service, many soldiers have lost all civil 
ties and means of earning a living, and re-engage as substitutes 
for those drawn to replace them, the system is nearly equivalent 
in practice to the English and Russian. But in Prussia the 1 
represents only 3 years. He is then thrown back, with his half 
military, half civil habits, into the mass of the community, and 
another 1 is taken out of the 80, without regard to his social 
position or relation to others, to be demoralised by the same 
process. By demoralised, it is not here meant that the soldier 
is necessarily a less moral man than the civilian, but that hi3 
habits of industry and steady application to work, and his knack 
or skill in his trade, are necessarily deranged; and in this sense 
his military service demoralises him for civil utility. His mind 
and habits, as well as his manual dexterity and aptitude, are 
injured. The operative, taken away from his factory, where his 
individual intelligence and dexterity may often be most import* 



i PRUSSIAN MILITARY ORGANISATION. 

ant to its prosperity, to be drilled and lead a military life for three 
years, and afterwards yearly for several weeks, returns with his 
habits, mind, and hand, out, as workmen express it, when they 
resume their tools after long disuse. He is no competitor 
against a workman in the uninterrupted exercise of his handicraft 
all his life. 

A public trained in the habits of military life are, also, bad 
consumers, as well as bad producers. The whole community 
necessarily brings from the ranks the rough tastes and habits 
easily satisfied with rude production, and very little of it, which 
are inseparable from the condition of the common soldier, 
whatever class he may have been originally drawn from. .As 
consumers, they do not bring into the home market the almost 
fastidious and finical taste for, and estimate of fine workmanship, 
superior material, and perfect finish, which is a principal 
element in^the superiority of one manufacturing country over 
another. 

Notwithstanding the testimony of all military officers to the 
fine appearance and efficiency of the Prussian troops, it is 
reasonable to believe that men who know that they are only tied 
to their military service in the line for three years, and are 
hankering after their civil occupations, and counting the days 
until they can return to their homes, are, as soldiers, not equal 
to men who have no connection with civil life, no ties, cares, 
hopes, property, or domicile, beyond their military position. 
This seems to be a point in human nature, on which others as 
well as military men are able to form an opinion; and as im- 
mediately previous to 1794, the testimony of all the military 
officers of Europe ran quite as high in favour of the efficiency of 
the Prussian army, as then constituted, such testimony to its 
superiority as now constituted cannot be received as altogether 
infallible. Regiments of the line almost totally renewed in the 
course of three years, with one-third of their strength always raw 
recruits, and their oldest soldiers, generally speaking, of less 
than three years' standing, can scarcely be equal to old regiments 
of seasoned soldiers, although they may be pattern regiments 
for drill, dress, and good arrangement; and regiments of reserve, 
although consisting of soldiers of three years' standing, if only 
embodied for a few days or weeks in summer, are after all only 
a good militia. England, Russia, France, and Austria, have 
adopted a far cheaper military system for society, one better 
for the civil liberty of the people, and probably one better too 



ITS ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES. * 7 

for Laving effective troops, by taking a proportion of the people 
by voluntary enlistment, or by forced conscriptions, and keeping 
the same individuals always, or as long as they are fit for service, 
embodied as an army, relieving the rest, the. great body of the 
community, altogether from the heavy annual tax on their time 
and industry, which presses on the people in Prussia and the 
other German States. . These scape-goats for the rest of the 
community form, probably, more effective soldiers individually ; 
and collectively are, without doubt, a more effective military 
power in the hands of a government. The whole population of 
a monarchy, organised, drilled, disciplined, regimented, ready 
and effective at a call to fight for king and country, sounds 
remarkably well in a school boy's oration, or a newspaper para- 
graph. But look closely into the thing. A modern army is a 
political machine, composed of artillery, cavalry, and infantry, in 
the hands of a state, and movable at its pleasure; and unless this 
machine be not only perfect in all its parts, but movable and 
disposable for offensive, aggressive operation, as well as for mere 
defence of its native land, it is of no real political weight . in 
Europe. Does the Prussian system fulfil these conditions of an 
effective, political, military power? Is it perfect in all its parts, 
or only as perfect as the nature of its formation allows it to be? 
Artillery and cavalry, the most essential parts of this machine, 
can scarcely be formed at all in less than three years, we are 
told by our most experienced officers who have written on 
tactics; and in these services the man is part and parcel of his 
horse, or of his gun. He has not, like the infantry soldier, a 
value independent of other things; but out of connection and 
practice with the identical gun, horse, and squad he is trained 
to work with, he is but part of a tool, the stock if a firelock, 
the handle only of a hammer. It is evident there can be no 
perfection in these two important branches of military pow r er in 
such militia troops. 

Is such a military machine as that of .Prussia movable and 
disposable? Is it a military force which could be shipped to 
attack or to garrison distant colonies — and without colonies 
Germany can scarcely become what German politicians fondly 
dream of, a great commercial power — or to carry on such a war 
as France has now on her hands in Africa, or as Russia wages 
in the Caucasus, or even to carry on a few campaigns in Germany 
itself, or in the Netherlands'? If Hanover were to occupy the 
Duchy of Brunswig, or France to invade the Baden or Hessian 



78 PRUSSIAN MILITARY ORGANISATION. 

provinces on the Rhine, or to get up a war in the East, is the 
Prussian national army, constituted as it is, a military force 
which could be freely used in a succession of campaigns, like 
any other political military force, on such ordinary political 
occasions nowise affecting directly the safety of Prussia? Or is 
this military machine defensive only, and, from its composition, 
of no weight or value as an available offensive power? Prussia 
was called upon by sound policy, and the ties of kindred, to 
prevent the dismemberment of the kingdom of the Netherlands, 
and to extinguish the Belgian Revolution ; and a few disposable 
regiments sent to Brussels to support the King of Holland — on 
the same principle that Austria sends a few regiments on every 
alarm into the Papal or Neapolitan states — would have turned 
the scale. At the siege of Antwerp, Prussia Was obviously 
called upon in honour to take a part, when a French force was 
actually in the field against her allies the Dutch. A good 
cause was not wanting, nor evidently was the will wanting on 
the part of the Prussian royal " family and cabinet: but the 
means, the machinery of an aggressive military power movable 
at the pleasure of the state, for any purpose, for any length of time, 
and to any quarter, were wanting. A Prussian army could be 
assembled for annual exercise and manoeuvre on the frontier, 
for purposes of demonstration, and even of occupation of ad- 
joining parishes in Luxembourg; but however brilliant, expert, 
and well disciplined such an army might be, and however ready 
and eager to engage in actual warfare its officers or its men 
might be, it is obviously so constituted, that it cannot be freely 
used in the field by its government as a political machine. The 
property, the industry, the intelligence, the influence of the 
country, are*in its ranks — all that is valuable in a nation is in 
its ranks, and not merely a class given up to military service, as 
scape-goats for the rest of the community, and composed generally 
of the least valuable and most isolated members in it, whose 
loss is simply the loss of soldiers. Here, the loss would be the 
loss of the owners or heirs of the property of the country — the 
loss of fathers, husbands, sons — of men on whom the interests 
and industry of the country hinges — of the most useful and 
influential classes in it, not of the unconnected, idle, and outcast 
only, of whom an ordinary standing army is composed. The 
loss by a victory would be greater to Prussia in a political and 
economical view, than the loss by three defeats of ordinary 
troops. The affairs of society would be more deranged ; more 



PRUSSIAN MILITARY ORGANISATION. 79 

useful life would be destroyed. An army composed of such 
materials cannot be risked, unless on the rare occasions, as during 
the last war, when national existence and safety are visibly at 
stake. The loss even of time and labour to all the productive 
classes, the destruction of all manufacturing industry and enter- 
prise, by calling out the army of reserve, composed as it is, for 
actual service for a campaign or two, would be such a sacrifice 
of all social interests, as only the most imminent danger could 
justify. 

If all wars were, like the last, for national existence, no 
system could be superior to the present military arrangement of 
the Prussian population ; and all the secondary European powers 
have run headlong into it, on account of its obvious excellence 
for the defence of a country, and its apparent economy; and for 
the same reasons, all politicians and political economists are 
loud in its praise. If all the European countries had adopted the 
same military system at the conclusion of the last war, this might 
have been wise. The only question would have been, whether 
the economy is not in appearance only — whether the taking 
up of the time and labour of the whole productive classes of a 
nation, for military service, be not in reality a retrograde step in 
civilisation and political economy, and one more expensive and 
ruinous to the people than the taxes upon the value of the 
products of their time and labour, necessary to pay a particular 
class to perform that military service for all. But the other 
powers have each retained a disposable military force of a 
different nature, constituted on a different principle, and avail- 
able as a political machine for any purpose in or out of the 
country, without regard or reference to the machine itself, or its 
connection with the industry and property of the nation, and 
therefore as a machine of* superior weight and availability in 
European affairs. The new national armies have no aggressive 
capability, and consequently no power of intimidation in them. 
They are like the enormous pieces of ordnance found in old for- 
tifications, to be fired off only in one direction, and only in de- 
fence. A French diplomatist would probably laugh in the face 
of a Prussian diplomatist, who could talk seriously of an armed 
alliance of Prussia and the other German powers who have 
adopted her military arrangements, for any political purpose 
whatsoever beyond the simple defence of their own territories, 
each for itself from within. The power of acting offensively 
without their own territories is gone. This great difference in 



80 AMOUNT OF PRUSSIAN ARMY. 

the constitutions of their armies N since the peace, has produced 
the most important alteration in_the relative weight and import- 
ance of the European powers. It has altogether changed, in 
an unseen way, the balance of power in Europe. For offensive 
war, and as a political power, Prussia has dropped the sword; 
while Russia, Austria, France, and England, have retained it, 
as something of weight ready to be thrown upon great questions 
arising, into the political scale. It is a mistake to talk of the 
five great dominant European powers; for as a belligerent capable 
of giving eifect by offensive operation beyond her own territories 
to her political determinations, Prussia is in reality as much 
out of the question as Denmark, or any of the secondary powers 
in the European system. It is a signal instance of the hidden 
compensations which neutralise and counter-balance all excess 
of evil in human affairs, that this great military monarchy, the 
last which made and retained conquests and acquisitions of 
territory, without reference to moral principle, or appeal to the 
feeling of the people themselves, or to the sense of right among 
mankind — for such were the conquests of Frederic the Great, 
the acquisitions of Silesia and of the Polish and Pomeranian 
provinces now concealed under the name of East Prussia — is 
the first which was shaken to the ground in the late war, by the 
insufficiency of her own military power for her own defence — a 
mechanical military power without national feeling; and now, 
by the perfection of the mechanism of 'her military power for 
home-defence she is paralysed, and disarmed as :a great political 
power. 

Of all the European powers, Prussia supports the greatest 
military establishment, in proportion to her extent, population, 
and finances. The infantry of the line is reckoned 132,013 
men. The cavalry of the line and of the guards, 25,200 men. 
The artillery of the line *»ud of the guards, 22,3 65 men. 
Pioneers, miners, and other bodies of the engineer corps, 13,500 
men. The infantry of the landwehr, exercised yearly, 124,737 
men. The cavalry of the landwehr, exercised for four weeks 
yearly, 19,656 mounted men. The artillery of the- landwehr, 
17,292 men. The amount, including 8,118 ofiicers, is 362,881 
fighting men. Two-thirds of the landwehr, first f^r service, is 
sufficient to complete the landwehr regiments to their war 
establishment, so that one-third (above 80,000 men) of this 
division of the force remains disposable, and the whole of the 
division of the landwehr second for service, which is as strong 



AMOUNT OF PRUSSIAN ARMY. 81 

as the first division. The whole available exercised force of 
Prussia is reckoned by military writers at 532,000 men. The 
artillery is said — of course no exact information on such a point 
can be obtained or sought by the traveller — to consist, in pieces 
complete and useful, of 648 six-pounders and howitzers, of 216 
twelve-pounders, and of 216 light field-pieces for horse-artillery, 
besides an unknown amount of heavy guns in the fortresses and 
in 336 garrison towns. The funds required in time of profound 
peace and non-movement of troops, to keep up this enormous 
military force, appears to be 22,798,000 thalers; out of a total 
revenue of 51,287,000 thalers. The revenue being pushed to 
the utmost point beyond which the productiveness of additional 
taxation would be null, being managed and collected also with 
great economy — the direct taxes costing but 4 per cent., and the 
indirect taxes 15 per cent, on the gross amount, as expense of 
collection — it does not appear how, in the event of a war, funds 
could be found to move this huge military machine. The time, 
labour, industry, and money, which should have been accumu- 
lating during peace in the hands of the people, and forming a 
capital diffused over the country capable of bearing the expenses 
of a war, are expended every year in military shows, drills, 
and manoeuvres, which, even admitting that they make perfect 
soldiers of the whole population, leave nothing to move them 
with in the event of real war — nothing to raise taxes from. In 
the w^hole Prussian population the number of males fit for 
productive labour, that is, between their seventeenth and forty- 
fifth year, inclusive, appears to be about three millions. It is 
3,042,946, including the infirm, sick, blind, lame, deformed, and 
all fit or unfit for military duty and productive labour. Above 
one-sixth of this gross number of productive labourers is taken 
by the state every year, for longer or shorter periods, from 
productive labour, to be employed in the unproductive labour 
of handling their firelocks, marching, and manoeuvring. A 
people whose time and labour are thus taken away from in- 
dustrial occupation, can never become rich or powerful as a 
nation, nor well off as individuals. The Duke of Wellington 
was right in an observation which has often been cavilled at — 
that notwithstanding our heavy taxation, the English labouring 
people are the least heavily taxed of any labouring people in 
Europe. The time and labour of the common man, with us, 
are not taken from him by his government. The unwieldiness 
and disproportion of the Prussian military force to the industrial 

B 1 



82 DEFECT IN CONTINENTAL ARMIES. 

force which should raise the means to move it appears from 
the following comparison: — Prussia *, with a population of 14 
millions, has an army of 532,000 men. Austria, with a popula- 
tion of 32 millions, has an army of 750,000 men: but if Austria 
adopted the Prussian military system, her army would amount 
to 1,216,000 men. France, estimated in 1841 to have a popula- 
tion of 35 millions, has an army of 840,000 men; hut on the 
Prussian military system, her army would amount to 1,330,000 
men. Great Britain, with a population of 26 millions, would, 
in proportion to Prussia^ have an army of 987,000 men as her 
present establishment — a greater number than in the heat of 
the last war, reckoning volunteers, yeomanry, and all, were 
ever withdrawn from preparing the sinews of war by the exercise 
of private industry, to make shows and sham-fights, or even to 
repel a threatened invasion. 

It is a defect in the present construction of the Continental 
armies — of that of Prance as much as any — that the private 
soldier who has raised himself to the station of a non-com- 
missioned officer has no prospect whatever of attaining the 
rank of an officer. The class of non-commissioned officers is, 
in fact, expressly excluded from any higher military pro- 
motion by the distinction kept up, in most services, be- 
tween nobility, from whom alone officers can be appointed, 
and the non-noble citizen, or burgerliche class. In France and 
Prussia this distinction is kept up by appointing officers only 
from the cadets, or military schools, and requiring scientific 
examination for a commission. The sons of functionaries, civil 
or military, who are educated carefully, and at some expense to 
the state as well as to their parents, are thus exclusively entitled 
to become officers ; and as functionarism breeds up to its own 
supply, there is, especially in the healthy services of those powers 
who have no colonies or unwholesome climes to wear out human 
life in, always a surplus of those who have a right by education, 
promise, and long expectation, to vacancies as they occur in the 
regiments in which they are doing duty as expectants or cadets. 
The meritorious private soldier or non-commissioned officer is 
thus entirely excluded from any chance of promotion. 2now 
this is a defect upon which a civilian is entitled to form an opi- 
nion as well as a military man, because it is a defect in the 

* Betracbtungen eines Militaers ueber eiiiem bevoratebenden Krieg 
zwiscben Deutscbland und Frankreich. Leipsic, 1841. 



DEFECT IN CONTINENTAL ARLirES. 83 

application of principles of social economy common to all insti- 
tutions in society as well as to an army. To exclude merit or 
capability from the highest point to be attained, can never be a 
good arrangement in any social institution. Education is the 
plea upon which this exclusion of the whole class of non-com- 
missioned officers from promotion in the Prussian service is justi- 
fied. Education is certainly not to be undervalued, especially 
for the officer ; but if we consider what the duties of a commis- 
sioned officer are, as ensign, lieutenant, or captain, and that in an 
army of a hundred thousand men, not two hundred are required 
to apply science or high education to their military duties, it 
appears obviously to be only a cover for the monopoly of the 
rank of commissioned officers by a particular class, to require 
that every subaltern should be educated to take the command 
of the movement of armies, and should pass through scientific 
examinations which would probably puzzle a Wellington. A 
sergeant-major with his sergeants, manoeuvres his company, 
troop, or regiment, without the aid of the officers. He does 
daily the duties which they superintend, and in reality learn 
practically to do from him. To shut the door totally upon this 
class is evidently a faulty arrangement of the military system, of 
a country. The efficiency of the French armies, so long as this 
door was thrown wide open — that is, during the whole of the 
republican period, and until the Emperor Napoleon shut it upon 
them, and upon his own success — proves that no military force 
is well constituted under the exclusion of the common soldier 
from the hope of attaining the higher military situations. The 
moral principle is too powerful for the aristocratic, in modem 
times even in military arrangement. The French and Prussian 
governments, without acknowledging the exclusion in favour of a 
noblesse, introduce it practically, by requiring the education 
which their noblesse or functionary class can alone afford to give. 
I could not hear of a single instance in Prussia of a man, not 
entered as a cadet, and entitled by his examination in science to 
a commission, who had risen from the ranks, since the peace, to 
the station of -an officer. The .government indeed has expressly 
declared, that the ultimate reward of long service and merit in 
this class is to be the appointment to such civil offices in the 
departments under government, as the non-commissioned officer 
or private soldier may be qualified to fill. In Prance, it is this 
defect in her military system which, in time of peace, seems in- 
separable from her civil arrangements from her functionary 



84 DEFECT IN CONTINENTAL ARMIES. 

system, that keeps alive the discontented republican spirit in the 
great body of the youth who supply the ranks, yet are excluded 
from promotion in the army. The Bourbon family never can 
obtain military popularity, as this exclusion is naturally ascribed 
to their system of government. The " petit caporal" applied to 
Napoleon, is not merely a term of endearment in the recollections 
of the French soldiery — it has a political meaning. In England, 
this defect in the old military arrangements has been perceived 
by the liberal ministry ; and the non-commissioned class has 
been raised to a higher respectability than in any service in 
Europe. The chances are small, no doubt, in the British army, 
of the private soldier or non-commissioned officer attaining 
the rank of officer ; yet more such promotions of men. 6riginally 
from the ranks, take place in one year in the British sendee, 
than have taken place since the peace in all the Continental ser- 
vices put together. The non-commissioned class in an army 
are the equivalent to the middle classes in civil society. When 
the want of education, the vice, the brutality of our lower orders, 
are so much talked of by our higher orders, it is somewhat sin- 
gular to find in the lowest order of all among us — that of the 
enlisted soldiery — no want of men of education and conduct to 
form a class which, in moral and intellectual condition, stands 
above -the middle class* of civil society, and not as all belo.v the 
higher orders who vilified that from which it is formed. Is it 
not in a great degree a mere fagon de parler among our gentry, 
when they speak of an ignorance, and moral, and intellectual 
degradation, of our working classes, with whom they in reality 
never mix or converse on such a footing as to know what they 
are % The superior status, as men of conduct and intelligence, 
of this middle class in military life, its higher respectability, and 
greater efficiency in the British service, strikes the traveller 
abroad, who happens to observe the different style of doing those 
ordinary duties in which the men are left entirely with a corpo- 
ral or sergeant — as in relieving sentries — in the British and in 
foreign regiments. In the latter, it is obvious that, when the 
eye of the officer is off, the restraint of discipline is not upon 
the men. The unmilitary observer abroad can apply no other 
test of the state of discipline to what he sees of soldiery, than the 
precise or lax style of the men when in charge of non-commis- 
sioned officers only. If this be an admissible test, the discipline 
of the British service is more genuine and better than that of 
the Prussian. 



DELICACY OF THE PRUSSIAN SOLDIER. 85 

Two distinct elements may enter into the construction of a 
military force in modern times. The rough peasant, or working- 
man -element, may compose not only the main body of the 
soldiery and non-commissioned officers, but may be mixed pretty 
high up even in the class of commissioned officers ; or the 
gentleman-element, that of the educated, refined, delicately bred 
and brought up classes, may, by the formation of the military 
force out of the social body, be found preponderating, if not in 
numbers, at least in example and influence, in the ranks of an 
army. Which of the two, as military machines, would a Wel- 
lington prefer to work with in a campaign 1 It is possible that 
a certain delicacy of mind and body, a certain inrpatience of 
fatigue and discomfort, a certain over refinement for the work of 
the common soldier, may creep in and pervade too generally the 
mass of an army, assimilating the rougher material, of which 
soldiery, to be effective, must be composed, too much to itself. 
The soldier, like the horse, may be too finely bred, too delicately 
reared for his work, too soft, too refined, too much used to com- 
forts. The composition of the Prussian army, drawn indiscrimi- 
nately from all classes, from the middle and comfortable as well 
as the roughly living classes, has this defect evidently in it. 
The common labouring man himself on the Continent is, from 
the nature of the climate and his indoor employments for half 
the year, much less exposed to, and less hardened against, wet, 
cold, fatigue, and privation, than our common people. Those 
above the mere labouring class, the peasantry, the artisans, the 
middle class, and higher classes, all of whom are in the ranks, 
are so comfortably brought up, so wont to their regular meals, 
their cup of coffee, their pipe, their warm clothing, warm rooms, 
and are so cold- catching and sensible of weather, wet, fatigue, 
and discomfort, that even our highest classes of nobility and 
gentry are much more hardy, and, as every traveller remarks, 
fir more robust in constitution and capability of enduring great 
fatigue and privation, than the very servants they hire on the 
Continent to attend them. A military force composed of such 
a material may be very brilliant for a single field-day, a battle, 
or a short campaign even, and very effective for home defence, 
but is not of the stuff for long rough fatigue and persevering 
endurance of all discomfort and privation, which in all ordinary 
military conjunctures are the military qualities that ensure suc- 
cess. Something of this want of the rougher material, and of 
this excess of the finer material, appears, even to the unniilitary 



SQ DELICACY OF THE PRUSSIAN SOLDIER. 

eye, about the Prussian soldiery. They are light, well made, 
even elegant figures — youths evidently formed upon the standard 
of a higher class of society than the common men in other ser- 
vices. They have not only the use of their limbs, but the kind 
of grace of movement which such exercises as dancing, fencing, 
and gymnastics give. They attitudinise well on sentry, dress indi- 
vidually well, and with a certain degree of dandyism, pautalooned, 
padded, and laced in, and which beseems the soldier. But still 
the unmilitary English eye of the common traveller misses the 
giant frame, strength, and vigour, of the front rank men of our 
good regiments of the line. The guards even, and cuirassiers, 
compared to the British, appear — can it be prejudice, or is it 
reality 1 — of ordinary infantry and ordinary dragoon make and 
size. Put them in the uniforms of riflemen, or of hussars, and 
they would pass for such on ordinary unmilitary people ; but 
put one of our horseguards, or cuirassiers, on the horse, and in 
the accoutrements of a light cavalry man, or one of our grena- 
diers, not of the guards alone but of any of our good regiments, 
into a light infantry company, and there is not a grocer iu 
Marylebone parish who would not find out at once that this 
kind of man was misplaced. !STow this kind of man — the strong, 
sinewy, bony, muscular, grenadier frame of man, such as com- 
poses the front ranks at least of all our good regiments of the 
line — is a very scarce kind of man in Germany, probably from 
the natural growth and make of the people, and also from their 
softer and more delicate, more sedentary, more indoor life in 
boyhood when the frame is forming. If you see a stout man 
he is generally fleshy, with more weight than strength. A ten- 
dency to grow corpulent, and with what generally accompanies 
that tendency of the frame, a shortness of the arm bones as com- 
pared to men of the same size of lean, spare constitutions, is very 
common in Germany. This tendency to a lusty roundabout 
rather than a muscular growth, strikes the eye in the Prussian 
soldiery, and is no doubt derived from the easy, regular, good 
living, to which the classes from whom the ranks are tilled have 
been accustomed from infancy. If a doubt may be permitted to 
a traveller, not certainly qualified to judge of such military 
matters, it would be — Is this so good a material to form an army 
of, this admixture of a class more delicately bred than the com- 
mon labouring man, and giving its own habits, wants, and tastes, 
to the whole mass 'I Is this gentleman-element so well adapted to 
f&Uid privation, fatigue, discomfort, and all that assails the com- 



LONGEVITY OF PRUSSIAN OFFICERS. 87 

mon soldier, as the rougher material, the common working-man- 
element, out of which our army is composed ? 

Another obvious defect in the military establishment of 
Prussia is the want of any cure for longevity. The common men 
live indeed too short a time in the service — only for three years ; 
but the officers live by far too long. Captains of companies of 
forty-five years of age, and lieutenants advancing to that time of 
life, are too common. Africa in the French service, the East 
and West Indies, the expense of home quarters, and the good 
half-pay in our service, are remedies counteracting in some de- 
gree this malady, the most pernicious to the efficiency and vigoui 
of a, military force that can get the ascendancy in it. It was the 
main cause of the destruction of the Prussian army in the first 
campaigns of the revolutionary wax against the French ; and our 
own army never did any good in the last war until the elderly 
gentlemen were got rid of, and captains of companies were 
generally under five-and-twenty, and field officers under five-and- 
thirty. With officers of the age when, in the course of nature, 
activity, endurance of fatigue, elasticity of body and mind, are 
failing, order, discipline, and appearance may be kept up admir- 
ably in a body of men, but the spirit and dash is wanting. Prussia 
lias no unwholesome districts, or severe military duties wearing 
out human life, or disgusting the officer with the service, and but 
few advantages for the military man to retire upon when getting 
too old for the duties of the inferior officer. The promotion is 
consequently slow, and men grow old in situations which require 
the spirit and activity of youth. It is not in the habits, also, of 
the upper class to keep themselves young by hard exercise or 
fatigue. The French officer is perpetually in movement, like a 
hyena in his den. It may be only a clen of a coffee-room, or 
billiard-room ; but there he is all day, in perpetual activity of 
mind and body. The English officer has his daily feat of pecles- 
trianism, harder than any forced march ; his hunting, his shooting, 
and is always in wind and working condition for any exertion. 
The German officers seem naturally of more sedentary habits. 
You seldom see them taking heavy downright fatigue for mere 
pleasure or emulation, a.s our young officers do. The very school- 
boys walk, and don't run in Germany. 

In the event of a rupture with France upon the French claim 
of having the Rhine for their boundary, the chances would run 
very much against Prussia, notwithstanding the excellence of her 
military arrangements for defence ; it is a national question in 



88 RESULT OF A WAR WITH FRANCE. 

France, one which has become almost personal in the spirit of 
every Frenchman : it is a mere political distant object to the 
great majority of the Prussian population. They have shown 
themselves capable of great exertion on great occasions ; but this 
would not be one of those great occasions which call forth 
national spirit for the defence of national existence, or material 
interests. German steam is not easily got up. The jealousy of the 
governments extinguishes every where in Germany the expression 
of public opinion, and consequently the diffusion of national spirit 
on subjects not immediately pressing upon the people. No 
political discussions in newspapers or in conversation, no agitation 
or party feelings upon their own affairs keep alive the flame. In 
public places where people meet and talk, the literature or 
science of the day, the theatre, opera, or ballet, and perhaps the 
reviews of the military, and the journeys of their princes to- or 
from their residences, are discussed, but never the national objects, 
interests, or politics. You never hear among the lowest class of 
Germans the vulgar prejudices of the vulgar Englishman, French- 
man, or American, about the superiority of his country, which 
make him insufferable as an individual, but respectable as an 
atom of a nation inspired with the same intense public spirit. 
The Prussians are educated, trained, and governed out of this 
spirit. The German newspaper writers, since the agitation of 
France under the administration of Thiers about the Rhine 
boundary, begin to talk of a German national spirit to be kindled 
in every breast by the German commercial league, but have only 
got so far, as yet, as to be quarrelling about whether this univer- 
sal Teutonic flame is to be lighted upon a Prussian hearth- 
stone, or is to have a fire-place for itself ; whether all Germany 
is to be Prussia, or Prussia a part of all Germany united into 
one bundle, and set fire to as soon as the French march to the 
Rhine. The partition of Poland is but beginning now to present 
Prussia with the fruits of iniquity. The two or three millions 
of Polish subjects of Prussia, so far from being amalgamated with, 
the Prussian subjects, live in a state of passive resistance to the 
Prussian government. They cultivate their own nationality, will 
not mix with the Prussians, and will not even accept of civil 
office, or educate their children in the German language, customs, 
and laws, so as to fill the civil functions in their own country. 
They hold themselves as subjugated provinces, and are evidently 
in a state which will paralyse the Prussian military power the 
moment the French throw up a signal rocket from the banks of 



POLICY OF ENGLAND. 89 

the Rhine. All that time had done since the partition of. Poland 
towards amalgamating the people with Prussia, has been lost by 
the Prussian government delivering up to Russia the Poles who 
had sought refuge, during the last commotions in Poland, among 
their relations and friends on what they considered Prussian 
territory. At present the Polish peasants who desert their homes 
in Russian Poland to escape the military conscription, are seized 
in the villages of Prussian Poland, and sent back. This, say the 
Prussian Poles, justly enough, is not the state of a country 
amalgamated and incorporated with another independent country 
and protecting government, but the state of a subjugated country 
held only by conquest, and entitled to throw off the yoke. So 
general has this spirit of passive resistance to Prussian rule 
become in this part of the Prussian dominions, that his present 
Majesty has been obliged, since his accession, to remind his Polish 
subjects by a proclamation, that they have been incorporated 
with his kingdom in the settlement of Europe in 1815, by the 
five great European powers. The Poles quietly reply, that three 
of the five are themselves the robbers, partaking in the spoil to 
which they gave themselves these legitimate rights ; and refer to 
the undeniable non-protection of their provinces as Prussian 
territory, for the proof that they are not Prussian. 

It is here, and on the Rhine, that the flame of war will first 
break oat on the Continent of Europe. What will be the policy 
of England ? The day is past when an English ministry, however 
conservative, could venture to propose to the country to join a 
despotic state in subjugating Poland, or in repressing the extension 
of constitutional representative government over an enlightened, 
manufacturing, and commercial population on the Rhine. The 
aggrandisement of France by such an accession of territory and 
people is a bugbear which, in the present age, would not mislead 
the common sense of England, because it would be an accession 
of the elements of peace, industry, manufactures, and power in 
the public affairs of France, lodged in the hands of an enlightened, 
industrious, peaceful population — not an accession of warlike spirit 
and means ; and is at any rate an aggrandisement in no way af- 
fecting English interests or honour. England can only be a 
gainer, if every population from the White Sea to the Straits o£ 
Gibraltar were to give themselves free institutions, civil and 
political liberty, influence of the public over public affairs, and 
the power of restraining their rulers from wars or oppression. 



90 PRUSSIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM 



CHAPTER V. 

NOTES OX THE PRUSSIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. ITS EFFECTS OX THE MORAL 

CONDITION OF THE PEOPLE. 

The educational system of Prussia is admirable — admirable as 
a machinery by which schools, schoolmasters, superintendence 
of them, checks, rewards both for the taught and the teachers, 
and in a word education — that word being taken in the mean- 
ing of the means of conveying certain very useful acquirements 
to every class of society, and to every capacity of individuals — 
are diffused over the country, and by law brought into operation 
upon every human being in it. The machinery for national 
education is undoubtedly very perfect. The military organisa- 
tion of the w T hole population, and the habitual interference of 
government in all the doings and concerns of every individual 
— his very outgoing and incoming being, from the nature of 
his military service, matter of leave, licence, superintendence, 
and passport — make it as easy to establish an admirable system 
?md regulation in every object government undertakes through- 
out the kingdom as in a barrack-yard. But great statesmen 
and politicians, especially of the military and nobility who see 
only one class or one side of society, are very apt to mistake the 
perfection of the means for the perfection of the end. The 
mistake is common with our own parliamentary philosophers. 
An admirable machinery is constructed, which with its various 
and well-considered regulations and checks, improved on perhaps 
by the experience and ingenuity of successive generations, is in 
reality a masterpiece of human wisdom and contrivance — such 
for example was our own excise system with its salt laws, and 
such is the same excise system now, in all that comes under its 
superintendence : and in the regular working and wise adapta- 
tion of all the parts of this beautiful and perfect machinery, we 
forget that the object itself may not be worth all this wisdom, 
may be attained in a more easy, natural, and effective way. or 
may be even not worth attaining. The wisdom and perfection 
of the machinery of the laws, and arrangements for attaining 



ITS EFFECTS ON THE MORAL CONDITION. 91 

the end, are confounded with the value and wisdom of the end 
itself. The educational system of Prussia is no doubt admirable 
as a machinery ; but the same end is to be attained in a more 
natural and effective way — by raising the moral condition of 
the parents to free agency in their duties • or if not — if education, 
that is, reading, writing, and arithmetic, cannot be brought 
within the acquirements of the common man's children, but 
upon the Prussian semi-coercive principle of the state, through 
its functionaries, intruding upon the parental duties of each 
individual, stepping in between the father and his family, and 
enforcing by state regulations, fines and even imprisonment,* 
what should be left to the moral sense of duty and natural 
affection of every parent who is not in a state of pupillage from 
mental imbecility — then is such education not worth the demora- 
lising price paid for it — the interference with men as free moral 
agents, the substitution of government enactments and superin- 
tendence in the most sacred domestic affairs for self-guidance by 
conscience, good principle, and common sense — the reduction, in 
short of the population of a country to the social condition of a 
soldiery off duty roaming about their parade ground, under the 
eye and at the call of their superiors, without free agency or a 
sense of moral responsibility. Moral effects in society can only 
be produced by moral influences. We may drill boys into 
reading and writing machines ; but this is not education. The 
almost mechanical operations of reading, writing, and reckoning, 
are unquestionably most valuable acquirements — who can deny 
or doubt it I — but they are not education ; they are the means 
only, not the end — the tools, not the work, in the education of 

* I asked an intelligent Prussian what eould be done if a parent refused 
to send hi- child to school? He told me he had lately been at ihe police- 
i when a man was brought in for not sending his girl to school. She 
could not read, although advancing to the age to be confirmed. The man 
said his girl was earning her bread at a manufactory which he named, 
and he could not maintain her at school. He was asked why he did not send 
her to the evening schools established for such cases, and held after work- 
ing hours, or to the Sunday schools. He said his wife had a large family 
of young infants, and his girl had to keep them when she came from her 
work, while her mother was washing for them, and doing other needful 
family work, which she could not do with a child in her arms. The man 
was told that he would be committed to prison if he and his wife did not 
send their girl to school. 

In such a case would the school-learning be worth that learning which 
the girl was receiving at home in household work, or in taking care of 
children ? 



92 PRUSSIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM ! 

man. We are too ready in Britain to consider them as tools 
"which will work of themselves — that if the labouring man is 
taught to read his Bible, he becomes necessarily a moral, religious 
man — that to read is to think. This confounding of the means 
with the end is practically a great error. We see no such 
effects from the acquisition of much higher branches of school 
education, and by those far above the social position of the 
labouring man. Beading and writing are acquirements very 
widely diffused in Paris, in Italy, in Austria, in Prussia, in 
Sweden; but the people are not moral, nor religious, nor enlight- 
ened, nor free, because they possess the means: they are not of 
educated mind in any true sense. If the ultimate object of all 
education and knowledge be to raise man to the feeling of his 
own moral worth, to a sense of his responsibility to his Creator 
and to his conscience for every act, to the dignity of a reflecting, 
self-guiding, virtuous, religious member of society, then the 
Prussian educational system is a failure. It is only a training 
from childhood in the conventional discipline and submission of 
mind, which the state exacts from its subjects. It is not a 
training or education which has raised, but which has lowered, 
the human character. This system of interference and intrusion 
into the inmost domestic relations of the people, this educational 
drill of every family by state means and machinery, supersedes 
parental tuition. It is a fact not to be denied that the Prussian 
population is at this day, when the fruits of this educational 
system may be appreciated in the generation of the adults, in a 
remarkably demoralised condition in those branches of moral 
conduct which cannot be taught in schools, and are not taught by 
the parents, because parental tuition is broken in upon by govern- 
mental interference in Prussia, its efficacy and weight annulled, and 
the natural dependence of the child upon the words and wisdom 
of its parent — the delicate threads by which the infant's mind, as 
its body, draws nutriment from its parent — is ruptured. They 
know little of human nature who know not that more of moral 
education may be conveyed in a glance of a mother's eye than 
in a whole course of reading and writing, under educational 
sergeants or clergymen in primary schools and gymnasia. Of 
all the virtues, that which the domestic family education of 
both the sexes most obviously influences — that which marks 
more clearly than any other the moral condition of a society, 
the home state of moral and religious principles, the efficiency of 
those principles in it, and the amount of that moral restraint 



ITS EFFECTS OX THE MORAL COXDITIOX. 93 

upon passions and impulses, which it is the object of education 
and knowledge to attain — is undoubtedly female chastity. Will 
any traveller, will any Prussian say, that this index-virtue of 
the moral condition of a people is not lower in Prussia than 
in almost any part of Europe I * It is no uncommon event in 
the family of a respectable tradesman in Berlin to find upon his 
breakfast table a little baby, of which, whoever may be the 
father, he has no doubt at all about the maternal grandfather. 
Such accidents are so common in the class in which they are 
least common with us — the middle class, removed from ignorance 
or indigence — that thty are regarded but as accidents, as youth- 
ful indiscretions, not as disgraces affecting, as with us, the respect- 
ability and happiness of all the kith and kin for a generation. 
This educational drill of all the children of the community to 
one system, in schools in which the parent has no control or 
election of what is taught, or by whom or how, is a very suitable 
prelude to the education that follows it — the barrack life of all 
the Prussian youth, during three years of the most precious 
period of human life for forming the moral habits and character 
of the man as a future member of society. The unsettled 
military life for three years of every Prussian on his entrance 
into the world as a man, the idleness, want of forethought, and 
frivolity inseparable from his condition during this period, his 
half military, half civilian state, neither one nor the other, 
during all the rest of his life, his condition of pupillage under 
his military or civil .functionaries, in every act or movement 
during his existence, from his primary school service (schulpflich- 
tigkeit) to his being enrolled in old age as a landsturm man, 
are in reality the steps of his education. Are these the steps to 
any of the true objects of education? to the attainment of any 
high feelins: of individual moral worth and di^nitv? This edu- 

* In 1837 the number of females in the Prussian population between 
the beginning of their 16th year and the end of their 45th year — that is, 
within child-bearing age — was 2,953,146; the number of illegitimate 
children born in the same year was 39,501, so that 1 in every 75 of the 
whole of the females of an age to bear children,* had been the> mother of an 
illegitimate child. 

Prince Pukler Muskau states in one of his late publications (Sudostlieher 
Bildersaal, 3 Theil. 1841), that the character of the Prussians for honesty 
stands far lower than that of any other of the German populations : but 
he adduces no statistical data for this opinion. As a Prussian, he would 
scarcely come to such a conclusion, if it were not generally believed in 
Germanv. 



94 PRUSSIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM : 

cation al system is in reality, from the cradle to the grave, 
nothing but a deception, a delusion put upon the noblest prin- 
ciple of human nature — the desire for intellectual development 
—a deception practised for the paltry political end of rearing 
the individual to be part and parcel of an artificial and despotic 
system of government, of training him to be either its instru- 
ment or its slave, according to his social station. 

The British government has accomplished a much wiser and 
more effective educational measure — the only measure, perhaps, 
which, without giving umbrage to some political or clerical body 
or other, could have been adopted for the general education of 
the people — by the reduction of the postage on letters. It has 
brought the use and advantage of education home to the com- 
mon man, for it no longer costs him a day's wages to communi- 
cate with his family. This great moral improvement in the 
condition of the lower class extends the influences of advice, 
admonition, and family affection among them. The postage was, 
in reality, a tax upon these moral influences. The people will 
educate themselves in a single generation, for the sake of the 
advantages this great measure has bestowed on education. A 
state-machinery of schools and schoolmasters, spread over the 
country on the Prussian system, would probably have cost more 
than the sacrifice of revenue by the reduction of postage, and, 
owing to the clashing of religious parties, would never have been 
so effective in extending education. The means in fact of edu- 
cation — a neighbour to teach reading and writing, were not 
wanting — were to be found in every parish, and the want of 
schools was a far smaller obstacle to the diffusion of education 
than the want of any desire of the people themselves for educa- 
tion. The labouring class saw no advantage or benefit from it. 
This obstacle is overcome without interference with the religious 
opinions of any class or sect ; and it will be found that already 
the business of the schoolmaster in society is providing for itself, 
like that of the miller or the blacksmith, without any aid from 
church or state. The supply will follow the demand in educa- 
tion as in every other human want ; and the demand will be 
effective in producing supply, just in proportion to the value and 
use of the article in ordinary life. This measure will be the 
great historical distinction of the reign of Victoria I. Every 
mother in the kingdom who has children earning their bread at 
a distance, lays her head upon her pillow at night with a feeling 
of gratitude for this blessing. It is the great and- enviable dis- 



ITS EFFECTS ON THE MORAL CONDITION. 95 

tinction of the liberal ministry then in power, that they earned 
this measure boldly into effect without crippling its moral in- 
fluence, by reduction of a part only of this tax on the communi- 
cations of the people. 

Selbtsgefuhl is a superb word which the German language 
possesses, to describe the sense of one's own moral dignity as a 
man ; but the feeling or sentiment it expresses is wanting in a 
remarkable degree where you expect to find it strongest, — 
among the German youth, the nationally educated youth. Did 
it ever happen to a traveller taking a walk in the neighbourhood 
of Oxford, Cambridge, Dublin, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, 
St. Andrew's, or any of the universities in the United States, to 
be accosted by a stout, able-bodied, well-enough dressed student 
begging, with cap in hand, for money from the passengers on the 
highroad ? Ten thousand to one no man alive ever witnessed such 
debasement of mind among the youth of those countries, edu- 
cated or not educated. The lad would sell his clothes, work, 
enlist, si arve, drown, hang, but beg he would not. In Germany, 
within 1 alf a mile of the University of Bonn, on a Sunday even- 
ing, when all the town was abroad walking, I have seen a student 
in tolerably good clothes, his tobacco-pipe in his mouth, begging 
with his hat off on the public road, running after passengers and 
carriages, soliciting charity, and looking very sulky when refused ; 
and the young man in full health, and with clothes on his 
back that would sell for enough to keep him for a week. — 
This is no uncommon occurrence on the German roads. Every 
traveller on the roads around Heidelberg, Bonn, and the other 
university towns of Germany, must have frequently and daily 
witnessed this debasement of mind among the youth. This 
want of sensibility to shame, or public opinion, or to personal 
moral dignity, is a defect of character produced entirely by the 
system of government interference in all education and all human 
action. It is an example of its moral working on society. It 
is not from moral worth, character, or conduct in their private 
relations, but from government, from educational, military, or 
civil functionaries, that the studying class have, in every stage of 
life, to seek advancement. The generous feelings, impulses, and 
motives of youth, are smothered under the servile institutions of 
the governments, by which all means of living in any of the li- 
beral professions, or even in the ordinary branches of industry, 
are to be obtained only by government licence, appointment and 



96 PRUSSIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM ! 

favour,* not by moral worth, merit, and exertion, gaining the 
public estimation. Morally, they are slaves of enslaved minds. 
Compulsory education, compulsory religion, compulsory military 
service, and the finger of government interfering in all action 
and opinion, and leaving nothing to free will and uncontrolled 
individual judgment, produce youths well educated, as it is called, 
because they can read, write, and sing, well dressed, well drilled, 
and able-bodied ; and whose selbstgefuhl, whose moral sense has 
not been educated, raised, and cultivated, even to the extent of 
making them feel debased or degraded at running, cap in hand, 
begging at the side of carriages on the highway. 

This want of self-respect in the German character, produced 
by the educational and social system, and the undue importance 
in the German mind of rank, office, and conventional distinction, 
and the undue weight of these in the social economy of Germany, 
are strongly marked by the profusion! of orders, stars, crosses, 
ribbons, and empty titles, with which the people, both of civil 
and military station, adorn and gratify themselves. Every third 
man you meet in the streets has a label in his button-hole, 
telling, all the world, " I am a knight, look at me." No very 
young man among the Continental military can have ever heard 
a bullet whistle in the field : so that even by this class no very 
profound respect for the ribbon at the button-hole can be claimed, 
and none at all by the ordinary civil classes who trick themselves 
out with it en militaire. The feeling of personal worth — the 
pride, it may be — seems unknown to them, which leads the 
British nobleman, gentleman of high station, or military officer, 
who may have been honoured with a British or foreign order, to 
wear it only on particular parade occasions. He feels that he 
is something without the external testimonial of it : the German 
takes the emblem for the thing itself. The English gentleman 
would think it quite as inconsistent with his personal dignity to 

* Tn 1834, for every 100 church or school situations to be filled up in 
the Prussian dominions, there were 262 candidates qualified by studies at 
the universities ; for every 100 juridical situations, 256 candidates; for 
every 100 medical 198 candidates. 

f The difference of national character between the English and Con- 
tinental people on this point is illustrated by the circumstance, that in 
1S34 the members of a singleJContinental order — the French order of the 
legion of honour — amounted to 49,620 persons, and in the same year the 
five British orders numbered only 906 members, and of these the greater 
number were persons of that social distinction from birth, rank, or office, 
that the decoration of an order was but an adjunct of little importance. 



ITS EFFECTS ON THE MORAL CONDITION. 97 

walk about on ordinary occasions, in the ordinary circles of 
society, with his stars, crosses, and ribbons plastered on his 
breast, as with the gazette of the actions in which he had won 
his distinctions, plastered on his back. The German, again, ties 
his bit of red ribbon even to the button-hole of his dressing- 
gown ; the merchant goes to his counting-house, the apothecary 
to the barber's shop to be shaved, the professor to his lecture 
room, in crosses and ribbons, as if they were going to the levee 
of the sovereign. The upper classes of society in all countries 
are said to be very much alike, and to show few of the peculiar \ 
distinctive differences which mark the national character in the 
middle and lower classes of each country. This is a mistake. 
The English gentleman, from the highest rank to the very lowest 
that assumes the appellation, is distinguished from the Continen- 
tal gentleman by this peculiar trait of character — his dependence 
on himself for his social position, his self-esteem, call it pride, 
or call it a high-minded feeling of his own worth. There he 
stands, valuing himself upon something within himself, and not 
upon any outward testimonials of it conferred by others. This 
feeling goes very deep into society in England. 

It is often objected to us by foreigners, that we pay the same, 
or even greater respect and deference to wealth, than they pay 
to the external honours conferred on merit by the sovereign ; 
that wealth with us, as a social distinction, takes the place even 
of moral merits, and " what is a man worth," means how many 
pounds sterling he has, without any reference to his merits, real 
or conventional, to his birth, education, morals, manners, or 
other distinctions ; that if he is poor, he is nothing in our so- 
ciety, if rich, he is every thing. This too is a mistake, a wrong 
conclusion from right premises. Wealth has all that pre-emi- 
nence in social distinction with us, which the foreign traveller 
observes ; and even more than he observes, censures, and is 
witty over. But what is wealth % It is a proof, a token un- 
deniable, of great industry, great energy, great talent in hid 
sphere, great social activity and utility in the possessor, or in his 
predecessor who acquired it. It is the indubitable proof, gene- 
rally speaking, of great and successful exertion of prudence, skill, 
mental power applied to material interests, and of extensive 
social action; and what ought to be honoured and esteemed, and 
held in the highest estimation in an enlightened society, if not 
the visible proof of these social virtues in the owner or his pre- 
decessors 1 The deference paid to mere wealth honestly acquired; 

G 



98 PRUSSIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM : 

its pre-eminence as a social distinction, stands upon far more 
philosophical grounds than the social distinction of mere ancestry, 
or of mere function, or of mere title, or of the empty honours 
conferred by a sovereign. Wealth is an independent social 
power, and is the equivalent in the material world to genius 
and talent in the intellectual. The Rothschilds, the Barings, and 
these great millionaires, are in the world of pounds, shillings, and 
pence, what the Shakspeares, Goethes, Schiller s, are in the world 
of ideas ; and their social action and influence, their wielding 
of a vast social power in the working of which the fortunes, the 
comfort, the bread of millions are involved, require a grasp of 
mind, and are entitled to a social distinction, beyond the com-, 
prehension of the mustachioed German baron, who, issuing from 
some petty metropolis, finds to his utter astonishment that 
mere wealth commands greater respect in this working world of 
realities than his sixteen ancestors, his lieutenant's commission, 
his chamberlain's key embroidered on his coat flap, and his half- 
a-dozen orders at his button-holes. The common sense of all 
countries gives this social distinction to wealth, above any other 
distinction that is not purely moral or intellectual. The princi- 
ple is as clearly felt in Russia as in America ; and where public 
opinion is in free action, as in England, it supersedes the princi- 
ple of mere conventional distinctions so far, that the latter 
without the former — nobility, titles, functions, orders, without 
wealth — are of no social weight. This common, almost in- 
stinctive judgment of all men, under all varieties of govern- 
ment, according this pre-eminence of social distinction to mere 
wealth, proves that this judgment is right, that it is founded on. 
some natural, just, and useful social principle, that cannot be 
philosophised away ; that wealth, mere wealth, is a more natural 
and just ground of social distinction than any conventional 
ground from mere birth, mere court favour, mere title, or mere 
rank. It arises from the people, and is conferred by the people ; 
and all other conventional distinctions arise from, and are con- 
ferred by the will of the court or sovereign. The encroachment 
of the former upon the latter is a barometer showing the real 
progress of a community towards a just estimation of social 
worth and action, and towards a higher moral condition. Where 
every third man is lounging about, as in Prussia, and generally 
on the Continent, with his orders of merit of some kind or other 
— and many whose general merits would apparently be nothing 
the worse of the addition of a little industry to earn a new coat 



ITS EFFECTS ON THE MORAL CONDITION. 99 

to stick their honours upon— the people, be their forms of go- 
vernment what they may, are but in a low social and industrial 
condition — are ages behind us in their social economy, and in 
their true social education as free agents and members of the 
community. 



100 PRUSSIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. 



CHAPTER VI. 

NOTES ON THE PRUSSIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM CONTINUED. ITS EFFECTS 

ON THE SOCIAL AND MORAL CONDITION AND CHARACTER OF THE PEOPLE. 

The voice of history in praise or reproach of kings is not heard 
amidst the whispers of courtiers, or the hurra of armies. Her 
aote comes to the ear of posterity from the cottage and the foot- 
path of the common man. The upper and educated classes in 
Prussia live upon the industry of the people entirely, by their 
appointments under the government, either as military officers, 
civil functionaries, clerical or educational officials ; or if they 
derive their living direct from the people, and not from the 
hand of government, still they derive the privilege to exercise 
this means of living, be it in the law, in medicine, in trade, or 
any branch of industry, from the constituted authorities. These 
classes are loud enough in their adulation of the government of 
the late monarch, and of the social economy of Prussia, — of its 
military system, its educational system, its functionary system, 
and of all that emanates from the higher powers. No wonder. 
They are strangers to individual free agency in society, and they 
hold their appointments and means of living, and look for their 
bread, or that of their children, from the hand of government. 
Their voice alone is heard in the literary world, on Prussian 
education, religion,- social economy and affairs ; and their voice 
is one shout of praise. But the future historian of this age, 
judging from purer sources, from facts and principles, will regard 
the Prussian social economy established by the late monarch as 
an attempt, now that the power of the sword and of brute force 
in civilised communities is gone, to raise up an equally despotic, 
irresponsible power of government, by enslaving the habits, 
mind, and moral agency of the people, thi^ough an educational, 
military, and religious training, and a system of perpetual sur- 
veillance of functionaries over every individual from his cradle 
to his grave. The attempt will probably fail, because it involves 
inconsistencies. It is a struggle of contradictions. A rigid 
censorship of the press, and a general education of the people ; 
a religious population, and an interference of government with, 



PRUSSIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. 101 

and a subversion by its edicts of, the religious observances, 
forms, and prayers of a church for which their forefathers had 
shed their blood in the battle field ; a moral people, and an 
intermeddling of the hand of government in the free action' of 
man as a moral agent, in the sanctity of family duty and 
management, and during the most precious period of human 
life for forming the moral habits and character — a barrack-room 
education for all classes ; a wealthy and happy people, and a 
ruinous yearly demand upon that time and labour out of which 
alone national wealth and wellbeing can grow, for the sake of an 
idle and unfounded display at reviews, and parades, of a military 
strength not efficient, in reality, from the nature of its materials, 
for military purposes ; these are incompatibilities which even 
Prussian discipline cannot make to march together. The reign 
of the late monarch will be regarded as an attempt to hold fast 
by autocratic irresponsible power ; but to shift the ground 
which supported it from sheer military force, to a power founded, 
somewhat like the Chinese, the Mahometan, or the Russian, 
upon the education, habits, and religion of the people, — all of 
which were to be Prussian, under the guidance of government, 
and subservient to its support. He will be judged of by poste- 
rity as a well-meaning but weak man, tenacious of what he 
deemed power (as all weak men are), and which (as is often the 
case) was in reality not power ; who forfeited his word to his 
people to give them a constitution, and who had a people as 
abject as he was autocratic. He came out of severe trial and 
adversity untaught by it, forgetful of the struggle made for him 
by his subjects upon his promise of giving them a representative 
constitution ; and he has bequeathed to his successors a social 
economy of his own construction, full of inconsistencies and false 
principles. There are men even in England, and they abound on 
the Continent, who deem it a social, almost a moral duty, to see 
nothing wrong in the doings of kings, to laud every act and 
every character clothed in royal authority. Our middle classes 
do not partake in this indiscriminating love for the purple. The 
distance of social position, like the distance of time, enables them, 
and they constitute the great body of our intelligent thinking 
public, to form an historical judgment of the men and events of 
their own times. They judge now, as posterity will judge here- 
after. They will judge that the late Prussian monarch, — the 
lauded, the almost worshipped by our aristocracy and clergy, as 
the best, the wisest, the most conservative, the most anti- 



102 PRUSSIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. 

revolutionary monarch of our age, — Las overturned the Pro- 
testant religion, and shaken Christianity itself, by his ultra- 
conservative zeal to establish the basis of his autocracy on the 
religion of the people. What would those lords, and squires, 
and clergy say, if a king and irresponsible cabinet among us 
were to put down the churches of England and Scotland, and 
to impose on the people by royal edict a selection of Mrs. 
Barbauld's prayers and hymns, instead of the time-honoured 
liturgy of the former church, and the spirit-awakening effusions 
of the latter ? This is precisely what has been done in Prussia. 
Mrs. Barbauld's nursery prayers and hymns are, as devotional 
compositions, quite as near to the excellence of the admirable 
old liturgy, or to the Psalms of David, as the compositions of 
Pr. Eylert and Dr. Neander, although aided, it is said, by the 
royal pen itself in some of the prayers, and of the doggerel 
ditties of the Gesang-buch. The Kurie Eleaison, and other 
operatic quaverings in the new service, are, it is said, borrowed 
from the Greek church, the late king having, when on a visit 
to Russia, been much pleased with those parts of the Greek 
service. 

The one point for political philosophy is, that this act was 
the act of the pattern king of the Continental governments, 
whose reign is held up by all the conservative interests on the 
Continent as a signal and undeniable proof that irresponsible 
autocratic power vested in the monarch, and all legislation 
emanating from the royal authority alone, without any con- 
stitutional representation of the people in the legislature, are 
compatible with the utmost good government, the utmost 
physical, moral, and religious wellbeing of society. 

The other great point is, that this is the people whose 
educational system, spirit, and institutions are held up as a 
model by the liberal, the pious, the benevolent of other 
countries, who are anxious for the diffusion of education • but 
who mistake the means for the end, the almost mechanical arts 
of reading and writing for the moral elevation of character 
which education should produce. 

The page of history does not supply another example so 
striking as this of the deteriorating influence of arbitrary, irre- 
sponsible power, both on the ruler and the ruled. It cannot be 
doubted that the late monarch was an amiable, well-meaning 
man, beloved by all who approached him. The more the his- 
torian gives on this side, the more he must take on the other. 



PRUSSIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. 103 

The mere possession in modern society of this irresponsible, 
unchecked, autocratic power in legislation, brings this good and 
popular sovereign into the unenviable historical fame of having 
overturned religion in Germany, and of having established a 
social, moral, and religious vassalage over his people. History 
will have her day of judgment, and will judge public men by 
their public acts. She will hear the cry of the victims, said to 
have been 2966 individuals, suffering for their religious or po- 
litical opinions, and pardoned on the death of this good and 
amiable sovereign by an act of amnesty of his successor. History 
will ask, what were the crimes of these persons (whatever their 
numbers may have really been, a secret probably only known to 
government) I What rebellions, what treasons, what tumults 
occurred in this reign ? Or were they the victims of their free 
expressions of opinions, — torn from their families and homes, 
imprisoned, condemned, banished, because they presumed to re- 
mind their sovereign of the natural and constitutional rights of 
the people, and of the royal promise to restore those natural 
rights to a representation in the legislature ; a promise given in 
the hour of need, and broken in the hour of prosperity '? Or was 
it their crime that they conscientiously opposed an arbitrary and 
unnecessary change in the Protestant religion, as handed down 
to them by their forefathers 1 History will have her day of 
judgment ; nor will her judgment of the sovereign be biassed by 
the private virtues or amiable qualities of the man ; nor by the 
adulation of a people trained to crouch before their master, and 
lick the hand that smites. The abject submission of mind to 
all authority, the suspension of judgment on public acts, and the 
adulation of all royal personages, are .natural effects on the ruled, 
of the unmixed, irresponsible, autocratic power in the ruler. 
The popularity of the ruler in such a condition of society is 
formed on his private personal character, not on his public acts ; 
and the fine terms of beloved, adored, patriotic, beneficent, 
applied to the monarch, are words of form by which the 
judgment of history will not be swayed. 

But, in stating the evil of this reign, the good should not be 
overlooked. It broke the oppressive feudal vassalage of the 
peasantry under the nobles, and has raised their condition phy- 
sically and morally. If a heavy military burden be laid upon 
the people, — if they have, in effect, only changed masters, and 
their time, labour, and free action in industry be now as much 
absorbed by the state, and its functionaries, as formerly by their 



104 PRUSSIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. 

local feudal lords, still the yoke is easy, which all hear the weight 
of equally. Let it not be forgotten, too, that the freedom of 
mind in intellectual, political, and even religious action, and the 
freedom of person and property in industrial action, are not felt 
as essential wants in a state of society in which the people have 
no intellectual or industrial activity. A few of the upper and 
cultivated classes only are in a social condition to feel restrictions, 
such, for instance, as~ those on the press, which all men, in our 
social condition, would fly from or rise against, as insupportable 
oppression. The good of the late king's reign, — the emancipation 
of the peasantry, — the promise, at least, of a representative con- 
stitution, — the removal of many old restrictions on trade, — and 
the introducing of many useful establishments, belong undoubt- 
edly to the monarch himself — to the good-hearted, benevolent, 
well-meaning king. - The evil of his reign, — the perpetual drain 
on the time and labour of the people for military service, — the 
attempt to make education, religion, and all social movement 
subservient to the support of a government system, — the centra- 
lisation in the hands of functionaries of all affairs of society, — 
and the interference of £overnment with matters which are 
beyond the legitimate objects of government in any free en- 
lightened state of society, may be ascribed to the influence of 
men around the throne, disinterested, perhaps, and sincere, but 
not enlightened, or advancing with the age ; bred in function, 
and seeing the interests of the people through a false medium. 
With enlightened men, as Stein and Hardenberg, for his minis- 
ters, the late king was an enlightened ruler ; with bigots about 
him, he was a bigot ; with functionaries, a functionalist. There 
is no inconsistency between the first part of his reign and the 
last ; he was evidently a good, well-meaning, weak man, led this 
way and that by each successive band of functionaries he em- 
ployed. The whole shows impressively the working of irrespon- 
sible power on the minds of the ruler and the ruled. 

The intermeddling with the Luthem and Calvinistic churches, 
and the unhappy attempt — unhappy for the Protestant religion 
in every country — to set up a third intermediate church, may be 
traced to the love of concentrated power over all things inherent 
in the functionarism which guides the Prussian state, combined 
with the system adopted in all the governments of the Continent, 
— of governing on juste milieu principle, of avoiding any decided 
mode of action, and of always taking some third course between 
two. Ancillon, who had been private tutor to the late king, 



PRUSSIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. 105 

and who died prime minister in 1835, published a work in 1828 
upon. Yermittelung der Extreme — Mediation between Extremes. 
In a number of-'essays on moral, political, and literary subjects, 
he lays down the extreme opinions upon each side — as for in- 
stance, on the classical and romantic schools of literature; and 
deduces from the absurdity of each extreme, the truth of the old 
saying — " in medio tutissimus ibis." There is a saying, however, 
quite as old, and much more generally true — " there are but two 
ways of doing a thing, the right and the wrong." It is the 
policy, or reasoning, of weak minds that seeks a middle w^ay 
between. In religion, in morals, in politics, as in mathematics, a 
juste milieu is a nonentity. Morally, and intellectually there is 
no middle point between true and false, right and w T rong ; and 
practically, no attainment between hit and miss. There is no 
neutral ground in religion, none in morals, and none in sound 
politics. When governments attempt to extend their power 
beyond the legitimate object for which government is established 
in society, and would embrace the intellectual, moral, and religi- 
ous concerns, as w 7 ell as the material interests of their subjects, 
they are obliged to adopt a middle course, between the extreme 
power they would usurp, and the innate principle in the human 
mind of resistance to power over intellectual action. This mid- 
dle course, founded on no principle but the evasion of applying 
principle to action, has been the line of policy of Continental 
statesmen during this half century. "We have seen the principle 
applied at home, and signally fail in the hands of able men, and 
in a popular cause — in the whole management and results of the 
Parliamentary Heform Bill in the hands of the Whig ministry. 
The common sense of the people would accept of no trimming 
between right and wrong in a great measure. If the measure 
and its principle w^ere right, they ought to have been followed 
out, and not sacrificed to any secondary or partial interests. The 
concession to Tory party power, — the attempt to find a middle 
point between right and w T rong, to settle the constitution upon 
a fog bank, neither land nor water, — the attempt at a juste 
milieu, in short, between reform and no reform, disgusted the 
nation, ruined the liberal ministry, and for a moment has injured 
the cause itself. " ■ 

In Prussia we see similar results from governing on juste milieu 
principle in an opposite direction of policy ; and attempting to 
govern in matters beyond the legitimate limits of government — 
in the religion of the people. That government exists in society 



106 PRUSSIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. 

for the people, not the people for the government, is admitted in 
our social economy, but not in the social economy of the Con- 
tinent. It is practically the reverse in Prussia ; yet here, the 
juste milieu principle applied to uniting the two Protestant 
churches into one for governmental support, has failed when ap- 
plied to the human mind ; it has upset the Protestant religion 
in Germany, — has opened the door to popery, and to infidelity, as 
the only two asylums from arbitrary interference with indepen- 
dent religious opinion, and has at last run up those who still 
adhere to the Protestant faith to a state of excitement and fana- 
ticism — to the extravagant doctrines and feelings of the age of 
the first reformers. 

It is said the present sovereign sees this false position, and 
intends to try back, and to abolish this mongrel Prussian church. 
But this is only conjecture, for in this highly educated land the 
people are only made acquainted with the intentions of their 
own government through foreign newspapers. In consequence 
of some paragraph in the Augsburg Algemeine Zeitung — a Ba- 
varian newspaper, in which the intentions of the Prussian 
government are sometimes made known — a change in the present 
church is supposed to be in contemplation ; and pamphlets on 
both sides, by Prussian subjects, are printed abroad, at Ham- 
burg or Leipsic, and smuggled in for the information of the 
country.* 

This is the state of instruction upon their own religious 
affairs, and this the means of information and discussion on their 
own most important interests, among a people boasting of being 
the most generally and highly educated in Europe, — whose edu- 
cational institutions, indeed, we are told by our divines, philo- 
sophers, and politicians, are a model for all other civilised coun- 
tries, and the most efficient ever devised for the intellectual 
development, and the religious and moral advancement of 
society. 

Owing to the censorship of the press, and the consequent want 
of interest in, as well as of information upon, the affairs of the 
country, the people in Prussia seldom talk home news or politics, 
and are as ignorant as in Turkey of what is doing by their own 
government. Foreign newspapers — those of Leipsic, Hamburg, 
Frankfort, or Augsburg — give them the first intelligence on 
their own affairs. The persecution of the poor villagers in Si- 

* For instance, Die in Preussen beabsichtigte Aufhebung der Kirch- 
igen Union, &c, von eineni alt Preussen. Printed at Hamburg, 1841. 



PRUSSIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. 107 

lesia who adhered to the Lutheran church, was, of course, not a 
matter to be hinted at in the Prussian newspapers ; and the 
circumstances would perhaps never have been known be- 
yond the immediate neighbourhood of the sufferers, if the 
Prussian government could have imposed silence on others, as 
well as on its own subjects. As the latest, if not the last, of 
religious persecutions in Europe in civilised times, some minute- 
ness in the detail of the circumstances of it may be satisfactory, 
or will, at least, show how, in highly educated countries, perse- 
cution is carried on. 

The amalgamation of the Lutheran and Calvinistic churches, 
and the introduction of a new liturgy and church service, or 
agenda, met with a passive resistance every where. In vain 
royal edicts assured the people that no change in their religious 
belief, and no restraint on the freedom of conscience, were 
involved in the new service. The ministers in Silesia con- 
sidered the attempt itself to assimilate the Lutheran and 
Calvinistic churches dangerous to the pure Lutheran doctrine, 
and openly declared that no earthly power had a right to 
interfere with freedom of religion and conscience. The parish 
of Hermannsdorf, under its minister the pastor Berger, and 
the parish of Hoenigern, consisting o^ ten villages, under its 
pastor Kellner, refused obedience to the order of the consistory 
to introduce the new service, and continued to use the old 
liturgy and service, and to receive the sacrament according to 
the old Lutheran formulary — it is the body and blood of 
Christ. The people flocked from far and near to these genuine 
old Lutheran preachers. The consistory of Breslau ordered 
pastor Berger to administer the sacrament alternately according 
to the new and the old service. He refused any such compro- 
mise of conscience, any such juste milieu, in his religious 
persuasion and duty, and was consequently suspended. In the 
great parish of Hoenigern, pastor Kellner adopted measures for 
a more powerful opposition. Before the arrival of the com- 
missioners of the consistory, he surrendered the church keys, 
and church property, into the hands of 40 elders chosen from 
the congregation, who received the commission with their 
minister at their head, singing psalms, and who gave a decided 
No to the question if they would receive the new liturgy and 
agenda. The commissioners were not admitted into the church ; 
and when they pronounced a sentence of suspension against 
Kellner, he protested against their authority as not representing 



108 PRUSSIAN CHURCH. 

the true Lutheran church by law established in the land. 
Kellner and his elders were arrested and imprisoned at Breslau ; 
but when the minister appointed as his successor came to 
perform the church service according to the new agenda, he 
found the church doors nailed, and a crowd of people obstruct- 
ing the entrance. On the 20th December, 1834, a body of 
400 infantry, 50 hussars, and 50 cuirassiers, marched from 
Breslau to this recusant parish of Hoenigern. The civil and 
clerical authorities again tried in vain to induce the people to 
accept the new service. Their elders and pastor had been 
twelve weeks in prison, but they continued obstinate ; and, at 
last, on Christmas eve, the military took possession of the 
church, forced open the door by a petard, and dispersed the 
people by a charge of cavalry, in which some twenty persons 
were wounded. The interim minister was thus intruded into 
the church, and the new service was performed on Christmas 
day, but it was to a congregation of soldiers only ; for not one 
parishioner was to be seen in the church. It was necessary to 
resort to other measures to obtain a real congregation for the 
new service and the stormed parish church. The military 
were stationed in the villages of the parish, and each recusant 
householder was punished by having ten or twelve soldiers 
quartered on him. The soldiers themselves were to exhort 
their landlords to go to the church, that they might be relieved 
from the ruinous quartering of men upon them, and those who 
would not conform were exposed to gross ill usage. These are 
the peasants, who, ruined by this persecution, sought a refuge 
in America. 

The diffusion of education may be great in Prussia ; but its 
influences have certainly not yet reached the governing class 
in the community : for these are scenes, persecutions, and 
principles of royal power, more like the history of the religious 
persecutions in Scotland and England under the Stuart family, 
two hundred years ago, than events not four years old, among 
the most educated people in Europe, and in which their 
government itself took the initiative and the gratuitous per- 
petration. 

If such be the state of intelligence of the educating govern- 
ing class in Prussia upon the simple point of religious toleration, 
one looks with curiosity to the state of intelligence upon 
religion, of this governed, educated people. 

Among all the aberrations from true religion, and often from 



THE SECT OF MUCKERS. 109 

common sense, of the countless sects our uneducated people are 
divided into (including even Johanna Southcote's followers, 
the Mormonites, Socialists, and the thousand others which 
appear and disappear amidst our freedom of all religious 
opinions), no aberration from the laws of morality, decency, or 
admitted social virtue, has ever been able to exist. All will bo 
good and religious in their way; and it is only in their way 
and ideas of being religious, not in their way and ideas of being 
good, that they differ. Left to act and think for themselves, 
the people .may take different speculative doctrines in religion; 
but in the practical doctrines which have a reference to real 
life, the public mind with us is well educated, and takes in- 
variably the one moral doctrine applicable to social affairs. 
In Prussia, the people, not accustomed to act or think for them- 
selves, are like children escaping from school, and rush into 
speculations in religion, politics, and morals, altogether absurd 
in the estimation of the more highly educated public mind of 
this country, accustomed to apply principle to.. action as free 
agents in all social movement. » In this way one must account 
for the singular fact, that the only positively immoral religious 
sect of the present times, in the Christian world, arose, and has 
spread itself in the most educated part of the most educated 
country in Europe— in and about Konigsberg, the capital of 
the province of Old Prussia. -The Muckers are a sect who 
combine lewdness with religion. The name, Mucker, is said to 
be derived from a local, or sporting term, indicating the rutting 
season of hares. The conventicles of this secb are frequented 
by men and women in a state of nudity; and to excite the 
animal passion, but to restrain its indulgence, is said to con- 
stitute their religious exercise. Many of the highest nobility 
of the province, and two of the established clergy of the city, 
besides citizens, artificers, and ladies, old and young, belong to 
this sect ; and two young ladies are stated to have died from the 
consequences of excessive libidinous excitement It is no secret 
association of profligacy shunning the light. It is a sect, accord- 
ing to the declarations of Yon Tippelskirch, and of several 
persons of consideration in Konigsberg who had been followers 
of it themselves, existing very extensively under the leadership 
of the established ministers of the gospel, Ebel and Diestel, of a 

Count Yon Kaniz, of a lady Yon S , and of other noble 

persons, and of several of the citizen class; and it appears that 
a great part of the nobility of the province belong to it. The 



110 THE SECT OF MUCKERS. 

notice of the government was first attracted to its existence by 
a complaint to the consistory, of a Count Von Fink, who had 
been a zealous member of the sect, that the minister Ebel, one of 
the pastors of the city, and who is one of its leaders, had at- 
tempted to seduce his wife, under the pretext of procreatingl a 
Messias. The consistory appointed two commissioners to examine, 
and report to government upon this business. The system and 
theory of this dreadful combination of vice with religion are of 
course very properly suppressed. All that can be gathered from 
the Allgemeine Kirchenzeitung of 1836, and the historical writ- 
ings of that year, is that this horrible sect was spread so widely 
that the official people were themselves slow in the investigation 
of the matter, and that the countess who had disclosed the prac- 
tices of the sect was in danger from their fury, and had to be 
protected by the police — that a very strict hierarchy existed in 
the sect, that it was divided in three classes, and that the ap- 
prenticeship in the first class must be accomplished, before the 
reception into the second class ; and that the strictest trials were 
required for being admitted into the third class, of which the 
members were called by a name of honour — that the doctrine and 
practice of the Muckers were a mixture of mysticism and gnos- 
ticism, of fanaticism and lust ; and that the heroes and heroines 
who had sustained the trials of their continence, or power over 
the flesh, were rewarded with the seraphim hiss with which the 
most abominable excesses were connected. The government wisely 
suppressed the examinations and proceedings, although copies of 
some of the first official reports and depositions had got into cir- 
culation among the curious, and the case was transferred from the 
local courts of the province to Berlin for further consideration in 
1837, but nothing since has been made known to the public on 
the subject. The sect itself appears by Dr. Bretschneider's account 
of it, to have been so generally diffused, that he says, " It cannot 
be believed that the public functionaries were in ignorance of its 
existence, but that they were afraid to do their duty from the influ- 
ence of the many principal people who were involved in it." * In his 
honest indignation he proposes, as the only means of extirpating 
it, that all religious meetings, all conventicles, missionary societies, 
religious tract societies, and in short all pious doings of the public 

* See Dr. Karl Venturing s Neue Historische Schriften, Brunswick, 1839; 
also Algemeine Kirchenzeitung, Jahr, 1836, Xo. 50; also Pragmatische 
Geschichte unserer Zeit, das Jahr, 1835, Leipsic, 1837 ; for what is known 
to the public respecting the Muckers. 



PRUSSIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. Ill 

among themselves, should be put clown by the state. This remedy- 
is a little too Prussian, dreadful as the enormity is in a civilised 
country of such a sect having existed in this age. It is only in 
the history of Otaheite, that its parallel can be found. 

A great deal of delusion on the subject of national education 
has arisen from confounding the means with the end — the ad- 
mirable means for diffusing reading, writing, and such acquire- 
ments, first adopted on the great scale by the Prussian govern- 
ment, with the end and object of education — the raising the 
religious, moral, and social character of men as intellectual free 
agents. It is only by free institutions in society that the moral, 
religious, and intellectual endowments of the human mind are 
exercised and educated. The mere operations of reading and 
writing, nay, the acquisition of knowledge itself, are but the 
means, not the end, and, if carried even to the utmost perfection, 
do not necessarily exercise and educate the moral powers of the 
human mind — the judgment, the self-restraint, the self-govern- 
ment, the application of principle to action, and of action to 
principle in our social relations. We see every day in indivi- 
duals that the mental powers and the moral and religious 
principle are in a very low, uncultivated state, although educa- 
tion, in its ordinary sense, has done its utmost, and reading, 
writing, languages, accomplishments, and knowledge have been 
extensively acquired. There is, in reality, a social education of 
the human mind, more important than its scholastic education, 
and not at all necessarily connected with it. This, the only true 
national or general education of a people, can only be given 
where man is a free agent living under social institutions in 
which he acts for himself, politically and morally, and applies by 
himself, and not by the order and under guidance of the state or 
its functionaries, the principles of justice, law, morality, religion, 
which should guide his conduct as a member of society. This 
exercise, or education of the human mind, is wanting in the social 
economy of Prussia, in which men are in a state of pupilage as 
members of society, and not of free agency. No amount of 
scholastic education, of reading, writing, or information can make 
up for this want of moral self-education by the free exercise of 
the individual's judgment in all the social relations of life. It 
is thus that the existence of this sect of the Muckers among the 
most highly educated, that is, scholastically educated people in 
Europe, must be accounted for. Their school acquirements have 
had no influence on their moral state — or rather have had a per- 



112 PRUSSIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. 

nicious influence on it, as being part of a social system in which 
the human mind is dormant, is trained to act without thinking, and 
under orders, instead of exerting its own judgment and exercis- 
ing free agency and reflection in its own moral, religious, and 
social affairs. In true moral social education the Prussian people, 
from the nature of their government and social economy, 
necessarily stand lower than the lowest of our own unlettered 
population. 

In the importance attached to the Prussian arrangements, or 
means for diffusing scholastic education, there is also much de- 
lusion. Reading, writing, arithmetic, and all other scholastic 
acquirements follow evidently the same law as all other human 
wants — the demand will produce the supply. Create a demand 
for such acquirements, for knowledge, for educated labour of any 
kind, and people will educate themselves up to that demand. 
The reduction of the postage in Britain has created this demand 
with us, has given to such acquirements a value almost entirely 
wanting before in the position of the labouring man; and this 
measure is bringing out the schoolmaster, without the machinery 
of national arrangements for education. The social value or im- 
portance of the Prussian arrangements for diffusing national 
scholastic education has been evidently overrated ; for now that the 
whole system has been in the fullest operation in society upon a 
whole generation, we see morals and religion in a more unsatis- 
factory state in this very country than in almost any other in the 
north of Europe; we see nowhere a people in a more abject po- 
litical and civil condition, or with less free agency in their social 
economy. A national education, which gives a nation neither re- 
ligion, nor morality, nor civil liberty, nor political liberty, is an 
education not worth having. 

Truly much humbug has been played off by literary men — 
unwittingly, no doubt, for they themselves were sincere dupes 
— upon the pious and benevolent feelings of the European 
public, with regard to the excellence of the Prussian educational 
system. They have only looked at the obvious, almost mechani- 
cal means, of diffusing instruction, viz., schools for teaching the 
people to read and write, and have, in their estimate and recom- 
mendation of the means, altogether overlooked the all-important 
circumstance that, if these means are not in free action, they 
will not produce the end — the moral and religious improvement 
of the people — and that the almost mechanical arts of reading 
and writing may be acquired with as little moral, religious, or 



PRUSSIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. 113 

even intellectual improvement of the human mind, as the . 
manual or platoon exercise. In their admiration of the wheels 
and machinery, these literary men have forgotten to look under 
the table, and see what kind of web all this was producing. 
Who could suppose while reading pamphlets, reviews, and 
literary articles out of number on national education, and on the 
beautiful system, means and arrangements adopted by Prussia 
for educating the people, and while lost in admiration in the 
educational labyrinth of country schools and town school?? — com- 
mon schools and high schools — real schools and classical schools 
■ — gymnasia — progymnasia — normal schools — seminariums — 
universities — who could suppose that with all this education, no 
use of education is allowed — that while reading and writing are 
enforced upon all, thinking and the communication of thoughts 
are prevented by an arbitrary censorship of the press, sometimes 
strict, sometimes lax ? Who could suppose that the only visible 
use to the people of Prussia of all this national education is, in 
reality, to write out official, civil, or military reports from infe- 
riors to superiors — that it enters in no other way into their 
social affairs ? Who could suppose that at the very period Vic- 
tor Cousins, the Edinburgh Reviewers, and so many other emi- 
nent literary men of all countries, were extolling the national 
education and general acquirement of reading in Prussia, and 
kindling around them a holy and truly virtuous enthusiasm among 
the moral and religious — for the diffusion of knowledge in all 
countries — that the exercise of worship any where but in a 
church was prohibited, and made criminal in Prussia by an edictal 
law dated the 9th March, 1834; and that many persons were 
suffering imprisonment, civil disabilities, or other punishments, 
for this Prussian crime of worshiping God in their own houses, 
and were only liberated and pardoned by the amnesty of August, 
1840 ? Who could suppose that while the praises of the educa- 
tional system of the Prussian government were resounding in our 
senate and our pulpits, this educating government was driving by 
religious persecution from her educated land upwards of 600 
Christians, who went from Silesia to the wilds of America simply 
to enjoy the privileges of religious freedom, and of communi- 
cating at the altar according to the forms and doctrines of 
Luther or Calvin, rather than of his late Majesty ? Who could 
suppose that while literary men were extolling the high educa- 
tional state of Prussia, her moral state stood so low that such 
a sect as the Muckers could not only exist in the most educated 

H 



(1^ PRUSSIAN EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. 

Df her provinces, but could flourish openly, and number among 
its members, clergy, nobility, and educated and influential peo- 
ple ? These writers had evidently been deceiving themselves 
and the public ; had looked no further than the means of edu- 
cation ; and had hastily concluded that these means must 
necessarily be producing the end. If to read, write, cipher, and 
sing, be education, they are quite right — the Prussian subject is 
an educated man. If to reason, judge, and act as an indepen- 
dent free agent, in the religious, moral, and social relations of 
man to his Creator, and to his fellow-men, be that exercise of 
the mental powers which alone deserves the name of education, 
then is the Prussian subject a mere drum boy in education, in the 
cultivation and use of all that regards the moral and intellectual 
endowments of man, compared to one of the unlettered popula- 
tion of a free country. The dormant state of the public mind 
on all affairs of public interest, the acquiescence in a total want 
of political influence or existence, the intellectual dependence 
upon the government or its functionary in all the affairs of the 
community, the abject submission to the want of freedom or 
free agency in thoughts, words, or acts, the religious thraldom 
of the people to forms which they despise, the want of influence 
of religious and social principle in society, justify the conclusion 
that the moral, religious and social condition of the people was 
never looked at or estimated by those writers who were so en- 
thusiastic in their praises of the national education of Prussia. 
The French writers took up the song from the band of Prussian 
pensioned literati of Berlin, and the English from the French 
writers ; and so the song has gone round Europe wuthout any 
one taking the trouble to inquire what this educational system 
was producing ; whether it had elevated, as it should have done 
if genuine, the moral, religious, and social position and character 
of the Prussian people as members of civilised society, having 
religious, moral, civil, and political rights and duties to enjoy 
and to perform. 

It is to us in England, with our free institutions and indi- 
vidual free agency in all things, an inconsistency scarcely 
conceivable, that a government should give the means, nay, en- 
force the acquirement of the means, yet punish and suppress the 
use and exercise of the means it gives — should enforce education, 
yet deny the use and exercise of education in the duties of men, 
as social, moral, religious, thinking, self-acting beings. But 
this is the consistency of arbitrary, uncontrolled rule, and of the 



PRUSSIAN "EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM. 115 

juste milieu principle of government by which* it seeks to 
continue its power. This is the government of functionarism 
and despotism united, endeavouring to perpetuate itself by 
turning the education of the people, and the means of living of a 
great body of civil functionaries placed over them, into a 
machinery for its own support. 



116 DISJOINTED STATE OF PRUSSIA : 



CHAPTER VII. 

DISJOINTED STATE OF PRUSSIA AS ONE NATIONAL BODY. DIFFERENT LAWS AND 

ADMINISTRATIONS FUNCTIONARISM- ARISTOCRACY AND FUNCTIONARISM 

COMPARED. 

The military system of the Prussian government not only im- 
poverishes and demoralises the people without creating that kind 
of military force, which, from its offensive capability, gives a state 
real political weight in European affairs ; but it counteracts its 
own object, and actually weakens the moral element of the 
defence of the country, in proportion to the perfection to which 
it carries the physical element — the military organisation. As 
under this system each individual is necessarily confined very 
much to his own military locality, the free circulation of the 
mass of the population through the country is impeded, and 
family ties, ties of acquaintanceship, of petty business, of trades, 
of common interests and objects, and a common spirit, can 
scarcely spread over adjacent provinces, much less over such a 
widely outstretched land. This military system with its pen- 
dant, the civil system, is the only thing common to all. The 
people of distant provinces have no common interests or objects 
amalgamating them into one whole — no liberties, laws, consti- 
tutional rights, common to all, to rally upon. 

" What is it to me if the French are on the Rhine," would be 
the reasonable feeling of every man north of the Oder, when 
called out for actual service in the field — " if they come to us we 
will defend ourselves, but what have we to do with these countries ] " 
The different provinces of the Prussian kingdom are, in fact, not 
amalgamated by mutual trade and communications, not united 
by their material interests. They are connected together only 
in a common bureau at Berlin, but are distinct existences in all 
that binds men together. The people can scarcely be called one 
nation. They are centralised but not nationalised. 

But is loyalty, is the devoted attachment of the subject to 
the adored and beneficent monarch, to go for nothing in this 
cold-hearted estimate of the connection between a country and 
its government, and of the impulses which lead a gallant people 



DIFFERENCE OF HER LAWS, ETC. 1 17 

to fly to arms, and defend with their lives and fortunes the 
rights of their beloved sovereign ? Let him who asks turn up a 
file of old newspapers, and he will there find his answer. He 
•will there find the same effusions of enthusiastic loyalty and 
devotedness from the same towns, provinces, and people — to 
King Jerom of Westphalia, that are now addressed to his 
majesty Frederick William IY. of Prussia — to King Louis of 
Holland, that are now addressed to King William of Orange. 
Change names, and dates, and the one would do for the other. 
It is within the verge of possibility that the same pen and the 
same scribe copied, and the same burgomasters or other official 
personages presented the same, the identical addresses to both 
monarchs, containing the same assurances of the inviolable 
attachment, the devoted zeal to the royal house, and the beloved 
sovereign, of the most loyal and faithful of subjects. The age of 
loyalty expired amidst the laughter of the world, when the 
Buonaparte brood of kings and princes exchanged their straw 
stools in Ajaccio, for thrones, and were treated in their Bara- 
trarias with all the honour, adulation, and devoted loyalty, that 
the "lives and fortunes men" of the day in Holland and Germany 
could muster. There was a moment in this half century, when 
royalty and aristocracy might have restored themselves to their 
ancient social position, by an act of great moral justice to society, 
by reducing to their original nothingness the swarms of counts, 
princes, dukes, marshals, who have been elevated to social dis- 
tinction by no social, intellectual, or moral worth or merit, but 
merely by chance, favouritism, or dexterity in unprincipled 
military achievement ; and by restoring to the countries, cities, 
communities, and individuals, the riches expressed from them by 
these personages in the shape of contributions, dons, taxes, and 
which, in reality, were unmilitary booty and illegal rapine. The 
allied powers overlooked or disdained, in the pride of victory, 
the opportunity of uniting the monarchical and aristocratical 
principles which they wished to re-establish, with the principle 
of moral justice. They themselves, by thus contaminating the 
conventional reverence for the monarchical and aristocratic ele- 
ments of society which they wished to revive, reduced the ties 
between the European people and their governments to that of 
their material interests. The constitutional states have endea- 
voured to strengthen this tie by giving the people a voice in the 
management of their own affairs, a representation in the legisla- 
ture. Prussia endeavours to manage the material interests of 



118 DISJOINTED STATE OF PRUSSIA : 

the people without the people, without a constitution ; and as 
loyalty and aristocratical influence in the social body are unde- 
niably effete as principles of national movement, her government 
is connected with her people only by two ties — that of the mili- 
tary army with its officers, and that of the civil army with its 
functionaries. Compared with Britain or America, the kingdom 
of Prussia is in a very disjointed state, owing to this entire reli- 
ance upon the civil and military power, without any connection 
between the government and the people in the management of 
their material interests. The material interests of the people, 
even among themselves, those of the different provinces of Prussia, 
are not amalgamated. There are no common interests, common 
laws, common religion, common voice in the legislation of their 
common country, uniting all. In that most important perhaps 
of all the elements of social union in a country — the law and its 
administration — differences and confusion prevail. The different 
shreds torn from other countries, of which the kingdom is com- 
posed, retain, in some degree, each its own laws, forms of judica- 
ture, religion, and rights, inalienable even by despotic power, 
unless with the will and concurrence of the people themselves. 
The power which alone could, with safety to the government, 
touch and change these, the power of the people in legislative 
assembly, will not be conceded by the autocratic government, so 
that tbe country remains in a chaotic state, governed as one, but 
not united. In the country west of the Phine, and also in those 
provinces east of that river, of which Cologne, Dusseldorf, Elber- 
feld, Lenney, Solingen, Coblenz, are the chief towns, the French 
law and its administration, the Code Napoleon, Code de Com- 
merce, Code de Procedure Civile, Code Criminel, the Justice de 
Paix, Tribuneaux de premiere Instance, &c, are all retained, and 
are so firmly rooted in the affections of the people, that no 
government could venture to alter them unless bj a constitutional 
act of a representative assembly of the people themselves. On 
this point these provinces have given manifestations of their 
sentiments not to be mistaken, when the government has pro- 
posed assimilations in the laws or tribunals to those of Prussia. 
This population living under French law, is the very kernel of 
the Prussian kingdom — a concentrated population of from .three 
to four million s, the most wealthy, commercial, and manufactur- 
ing, and the most enlightened upon their rights and wants ofauy 
perhaps in Germany. In the Province of Posen, again, at the 
other extremity of the kingdom the French administration by 



DIFFERENCE OF HER LAWS, ETC. 119 

justices de paix, and by open courts of justice, and open examina- 
tions of witnesses, prevails over the general Prussian adminis- 
tration. 

In the provinces which were mediatised, and even in the 
provinces which had long been under the Prussian sceptre, baro- 
nial courts were a species of private property which could not be 
taken away from the estate of the prince or baron. Government 
always had the needful check over the patron, in his appointing 
none as judges but from legally qualified persons bred at the 
universities — as in the appointment of a clergyman by a patron 
— and also over the judge, in superintending, revising, or revers- 
ing his judicial proceedings ; but such courts have the inhabitants 
of certain districts thirled to them, in cases civil or criminal, in 
the first instance ; and forms, expenses, conveniences to suitors, 
and confidence in' justice, are, necessarily, very different in a 
multiplicity of different local courts established at different periods, 
and originally with different usages. Deducting the population of 
the provinces standing altogether under the Code Napoleon, of 
the remaining 10,000,000 of people under the Prussian sceptre, 
3,700,000, or about one-third of the whole population of Prussia, 
are under private jurisdiction, and 7,900,000 only under the 
royal governmental courts. Of the royal governmental courts, 
not including the higher courts of appeal, there are 7,018, and 
of private courts, 6,134, of which 128 are of the patrimony of 
princes, standesherrn or high nobility, and of provincial nobility, 
and 6,006 are common baronial courts of patrimony. The judges 
in these patrimonial local courts appear to be paid either by fees 
or by dues from all the peasantry within the circle of the juris- 
diction, or by land mortified in old times, for the support of the 
judge; but appear to be so ill paid, that, like curates of old in 
Kent, one judge officiates in eight, or even twelve, of these local 
courts. The total number of judges in the 6,134 private courts 
is but 523. The greatest number of inhabitants subject to these 
local patrimonial courts, is in Silesia, where, out of 2,500,000 
people, 1.500,000 are under barony courts. The smallest number 
is in Westphalia, where, in a population of 1,300,000 people, 
only about 80,000 are under these patrimonial jurisdictions, the 
system having been abolished almost entirely, when Westphalia 
was erected into a distinct kingdom for Jerome Buonaparte. Of 
royal or regular governmental courts, the number in Prussia 
appears to be 7,018, and of judges paid by government 2,325. of 
whom 1,593 are judges in the inferior local courts. The total 



120 DISJOINTED STATE OF PRUSSIA 

number of all functionaries living by the ad ministration of law, and 
appointed by government, appears to be 11,401 persons. It is 
the first law of functionarism to take care of itself. To reduce to 
uniformity the administration of law, and the law courts, among 
a people, appears one of the most needful steps towards an amalga- 
mation of the whole into one nation, and, if strong measures were 
a-going, one of the most important to which a strong measure 
could be applied, especially as these patrimonial courts are founded 
on no principle of advantage or convenience to the people, or of 
just right of the baronial proprietor. But it would have been a 
curtailment of the living to be gained in function, a reform not 
to be expected from a government of functionaries. Until this, 
however, be done, the people of Prussia can scarcely be called one 
nation. The state wants unity. 

In the provinces, also, clipped out of ancient Poland, which 
are not inconsiderable, the province of Posen alone, containing 
nearly one million and a half of inhabitants, a strong anti-Prussian 
spirit, and not a passive spirit, prevails among all ranks. ISince 
the accession of the present king, the nobility there have refu 
to accept the constitution of a provincial assembly of t! 
desherrn, or nobles of a certain class, to deliberate upon such 
provincial affairs as the king may order to be laid before them, 
which is the kind of representative Constitution proposed to be 
substituted in Prussia for that constitutional representation of the 
people in the legislature promised by the late king — and avowedly 
upon the principle that they do not choose to be amalgamated 
with Prussia, and placed upon the same footing as the other 
provinces of the Prussian dominions. They will stand by their 
Polish nationality. It is this spirit, and not fanaticism alone, 
that was at work in this part of the kingdom, in supporting the 
bishop of Posen. and the Catholic clergy in resisting the church 
measures of government. Independently of the influence of the 
clergy, the Polish nationality is increasing to such alarming inten- 
sity in this q uarter, that obscure state paragraphs have been ii i sert e* 1 
in the foreign newspapers admitted into Prussia — those of Augs- 
burg, Frankfort, or Leipsic — to prepare the public mind in 
Prussia for some strong measure to put it down — some attempt, 
similar to the Eussian, to abolish by law the Polish language, 
customs, and national distinctions. It is a curious trait in the 
working of a censorship of the press, and of public opinion on 
public affairs, that an autocratic irresponsible government must 
condescend to cheat its own establishments, and avail itself ot the 



DIFFERENCE OF HER LAWS. ETC. 121 

press of a foreign town to sound the public opinion of its own 
subjects upon its own intentions. Can such a state of things be 
permanent ? Is such a principle of government as this autocratic 
principle, suitable to the advanced condition of the subjects of 
Prussia ? Are the relations between the governing and the 
governed what they ought to be ? The Prussian government 
wants to nationalise its subjects, and yet puts down the means of 
obtaining its own object. It wants to rouse a national spirit, 
yet would have the public mind passive, calm, and unagitated by 
political discussions of the press, or of public meetings, or by free 
communications on public affairs, It wants to sail with a fair 
gale of wind, yet to keep the sea smooth and unruffled bv the 
agitation which unavoidably attends the gale. 

The traveller inimical to hereditary aristocracy as a privileged 
state power in a community — not from prejudice or party 
feeling, but on principle, as an institution adverse to a liberal 
social economy — will find much to shake his opinions when he 
sits down here on the Continent to .consider deliberately the 
power which has succeeded to aristocracy in France, Prussia, and 
generally in the modern social economy of Europe. Aristocracy, 
it is evident, has worked itself out, and is effete in every coun- 
try, even in those, as Sweden, Denmark, Spain, in which it had 
• not been formally abolished or undermined by law. Where it 
still stands, with all its ancient supports, it is evidently going to 
decay, and has lost its roots in modern society. But the power 
which has sprung up in its place — the power of functionarism — 
is by no means satisfactory. It is aristocracy without the ad- 
vantages of aristocracy. The highest functionary is not an 
independent man. He has been bred in a school of implicit, 
almost military, submission of his own opinion to authority — 
has attained power through the path of subjection of his own 
principles aucl judgment to those of others above him. He has 
no independence of mind. Such public men in the higher 
offices of government, as our hereditary aristocracy and gentry 
on all sides of politics produce — men not to be swayed from 
what they hold to be right, and who renounce office rather than 
consistency and independent judgment — are not to be heard of 
in the functionarism of the Continent. The nobleman, generally 
speaking, is an educated man from his social position, and not 
educated merely for functionary duties, with the contracted views 
of office. He is also, generally speaking, independent in position 
and circumstances, and the public opinion and judgment of his 



122 COMPARISON OF 

political conduct is an influence more powerful with him than 
with the office-bred functionary. He is working for a reward, 
and under a check from public opinion which neither the su- 
preme power of the state, nor its subordinate powers above him, 
or beside him, can give, or take away, or compensate for, if it be 
lost by the course of his political conduct in public affairs. The 
functionary is not only independent of public opinion, but is 
bred up in a social system which has no reference to it, in which 
it is set at nought, and in which it can give him no support or 
reward for the sacrifice of office to principle, or of his own in- 
dividual material interests to his political interests. As a state 
power, or social body, functionarism compared to aristocracy is 
much more detached from the cause of the people. It is also, 
as a state power, much more dangerous to the monarch. It is a 
mistake to consider functionarism, as it now exists on the Con- 
tinent, a machine in the hands of despotic, autocratic sovereigns. 
It is a machine which governs the government. The history 
of France, from the hour that the military support of Buonaparte 
was broken at Moscow, shows that the crown itself is altogether 
in the gift of this new state power. The history of Belgium, of 
Spain, of Bussia, tells the same fact. It is considered by many, 
that here, in Prussia, it is functionarism, not royalty, that rules. 
The body of functionaries are like the bo<ly of clergy in the 
middle ages. The men are of one mind, bred in one school, with 
one spirit. The monarch has but a small number to choose from 
of men around the throne qualified to conduct or advise public 
measures. These are all men bred in the same way — men of the 
same ideas, mind, and spirit. It is but a change of persons and 
faces about him, not of principles or system, that the monarch 
attains by a change of ministers. He is in a position very simi- 
lar to that of his predecessors in the middle ages, when church- 
men held all state affairs in their hands. Since the decay of 
hereditary aristocracy, a power remarkably similar to that exer- 
cised by the priesthood in the middle ages — a body similarly 
constituted to the clerical, and in the same relative position to 
the sovereign and the people — is establishing a thraldom over 
both. The sovereign and the people have no free political action, 
or mutual working upon each other, through this wall of func- 
tionarism that divides them. In the hereditary aristocracy, 
the monarch had a selection of men bred in all varieties of social 
position — not as the functionary or the priest, in only one con- 
tracted sphere of action or thinking — and of all varieties of 



ARISTOCRACY AND FUNCTIONARISM. 123 

mental power, and, although connected by their material interests 
as a body with the welfare of the people, united to the personality 
of the crown by their individual honours, privileges, and social 
distinctions. The functionaries are only united to each other, 
and, like the clergy, are a body distinct both from the sovereign 
and the people, in interests and social relations. The habit of 
interfering, regulating, commanding in the concerns of the peo- 
ple, gives both to them and the people, a feeling of opposed 
interests and objects, not a feeling of mutual confidence. The func- 
tionary in Germany, even in the lowest station, is always treated, 
and his wife also, with the full ceremonial of his title of office, 
which shows that his relation to the people is not one of mutual 
confidence. The evil effect on the industry, and independence 
of mind, of a people, by such a mass of government employment 
with social influence and easy living, being offered to the higher, 
middle, and small capitalist classes, has been already stated; and 
also that this is the main obstacle to the development of national 
industry and wealth, and to that progress in trade and manufac- 
ture which the German people are at present dreaming of. 
Free social institutions also, the only foundation of national 
prosperity, moral free agency, civil and political liberty, never 
can grow up under the pressure of this state power drawn from 
the upper and middle classes, influenced by one spirit, and 
interested as a body in maintaining the importance, means of 
living, and patronage, derived from a multitude of functions 
established for restraining, or entirely superseding, free social 
institutions, free agency, and civil or political liberty. Func- 
tionarism is more adverse than aristocracy to civil liberty. 
Will the great social movement of the German people now in 
progress for their material interests and industrial prosperity, be 
able to shake off this incubus, to break up the system of interfer- 
ence, superintendence, and military arrangement on the part of 
government in all social action, upon which funetionarism is 
founded, and by which it lives'? Will the Continental sove- 
reigns, acting in the spirit of the German commercial league, 
and in reality for their own independence and power, abandon 
the military system of interference in all things, and of governing 
by functionaries instead of by the people? Will they fall back 
now, as some day they will be obliged to do, for support against 
the power of funetionarism, upon the powder of the people in a 
representative constitution? Or will they attempt to stick up 
again the dead branches of hereditary aristocracy around the 



124 COMPARISON OF 

throne ? The future state of society on the Continent turns on 
the solution which time and circumstances may give to these 
questions. The spirit raised by the German commercial league 
is hastening on their solution rapidly. One is already solved 
— the restoration of an hereditary privileged aristocracy in 
Prussia.. 

The Prussian government has, of late years, been aware of the 
false position in which it stands — admitting no principle but 
the purely monarchical autocratic principle exercised by its func- 
tionaries ; and yet encouraging the growth of a state of society, 
wealth, industry, and national spirit, directly opposed to that 
principle, and which can only exist where the people partake of 
their own government and legislation. The policy of late has 
evidently been to retrace its steps. The dissolution of the Prus- 
sian church, and the return to the old forms and spirit of the 
two branches of Protestantism, especially to the pietism of the 
old Lutheran church, is talked of as the wish and tendency of 
the court \ and it is even whispered that the abolition of the 
leibeigeiischaft, or . feudal servitude of the peasantry, and of 
the privileges and exclusive rights of corporate bodies in towns, 
is talked of in high places as having been a hasty measure. 
And undoubtedly so it was, if the monarchical autocratic principle 
was to be retained. At the coronation of his present majesty 
in August last, in Koningsburg, an attempt was made to begin 
the restoration of an hereditary class of nobles. It was proposed 
to elevate some of the wealthiest of the present nobility to the 
rank of princes, and to make the new dignity hereditary in the 
eldest sons, instead of descending, as the present titles do, to all 
the children ; and the new nobles were to be bound to entail a 
certain proportion of their estates upon the successors to their 
titles. The proposal, however, met with no acceptance. With 
almost all, the estates were so burdened that it could not be 
done without injury to their creditors. Others considered it 
would be an injustice to their younger children. Some declined 
the proffered honours point blank. The diet or provincial assem- 
bly of the standesherrn of Koningsburg, for deliberating on the 
provincial affairs laid before them — which is the substitute given 
for a constitutional government — although assembled for the 
coronation, and to whose members this offer was made, rejected 
it, and even adopted a petition for a representative constitution 
of the people, as promised to them by the late king under date 
of the 2oth May, 1815, to which they referred. "The city of 



ARISTOCRACY AND FUXCTIONARISM. 125 

Breslau, the third in importance in the kingdom, standing next 
to Berlin and Koningsburg, adopted a similar petition and 
reference. Cologne also made a similar move. These are strong 
indications of the rising spirit of the times — of the split between 
things as they are and the sentiments of the influential classes of 
the country. A retrograde movement is evidently impossible ; 
and it is equally impossible to stand still, with the whole mate- 
rial interests of the people, and their opinions and feelings for 
political existence in the legislation excited by the spirit of the 
German commercial league, and pushing on the government in 
a path which the government is pledged to take, in which its 
steps are watched by the people, and which necessarily and 
unavoidably leads to free institutions, a representative constitu- 
tion, and the abolition of the present sole monarchical, autocratic 
principle. 



126 BERLIN. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

BERLIN LEIPSIC BOOK TRADE ITS EFFECTS ON THE LITERATURE ON THE 

CHARACTER ON THE SOCIAL CHARACTER OF THE GERMANS THE GER- 
MAN THEATRE — ITS INFLUENCE — THE EDUCATIONAL INFLUENCES IN 
SOCIETY — THE SCOTCH AND THE GERMANS COMPARED 

Berlin has the air of the metropolis of a kingdom of yesterday. 
jSJo Gothic churches, narrow streets, fantastic gable ends, no his- 
torical stone and Lime, no remnants of the picturesque ages, recall 
the olden time. Yoltaire in satin breeches and powdered peruke, 
Frederic the Great in jackboots and pigtail, and the French 
classical age of Louis XIV., are the men and times Berlin calls up 
to the imagination of the traveller. A fine city, however, Berlin 
is — very like the age she represents — very fine and very nasty. 
Berlin is a city of palaces, that is, of huge barrack-like edifices 
with pillars, statues, and all the regular foppery of the tawdry 
school of classical French architecture — all in stucco, and fre- 
quently out at elbows, discovering the naked brick under the 
tattered yellow faded covering of plaster. The fixtures which 
strike the eye^in the streets of Berlin are vast fronts of buildings, 
clumsy ornaments, clumsy statues, clumsy inscriptions, a profu- 
sion of gilding, guard-houses, sentry-boxes : the moveables are 
sentries presenting arms every minute, officers with feathers and 
orders passing unceasingly, hackney droskies rattling about, and 
numbers of well-dressed people. The streets are spacious and 
straight, with, broad margins on each side for foot passengers ; 
and a band of plain flag-stones on these margins make them much 
more walkable than the streets of most Continental towns. But 
these margins are divided from the spacious carriage-way in the 
middle by open kennels, telling the nose unutterable things. These 
open kennels are boarded over only at the gateways of the palaces 
to let the carriages cross them, and must be particularly conve- 
nient for the inhabitants, for they are not at all particularly 
agreeable. Use reconciles people to nuisances which might be 
easily removed. A sluggish but considerable river, the Spree, 
stagnates through the town, and the money laid out in stucco 
work, and outside decoration of the houses, would go far towards 



LEIPSIC. 127 

covering over their drains, raising the water by engines, and send- 
ing it in a purifying stream through every street and sewer. If 
bronze and marble could smell, Blucherand Bulow, Schwerin and 
Zeithen, and duck- winged angels, and two-headed eagles innu- 
merable, would be found on their pedestals, holding their noses 
instead of graspiug their swords. It is a curious illustration of 
the difference between the civilisation of the fine arts and that of 
the useful arts, in their influences on social well-being, that this 
city, as populous as Glasgow or Manchester, has an Italian opera, 
two or three theatres, a vast picture gallery, and statue gallery, 
and museums of all kinds, a musical academy, schools of all 
descriptions, an university with 142 professors, the most dis- 
tinguished men of science who can be collected in Germany, and 
is undoubtedly the capital, the central point of taste in the fine 
arts, and of mind and intelligence in literature, for a vast pro- 
portion of the enlightened and refined of the European population, 
and yet has not advanced so far in the enjoyments and comforts 
of life, in the civilisation of the useful arts, as to have water con- 
veyed in pipes into their city, and into their houses. Three 
hundred thousand people have taste enough to be in die-away 
extasies at the singing of Madame Pasta, or the dancing of Tag- 
lioni, and have not taste enough to appreciate, or feel the want of, 
a supply of water in their kitchens, sculleries, drains, sewers, 
water-closets. The civilisation of an English village is, after all, 
more real civilisation than that of Paris or. Berlin. 

Leipsic, remarkably in contrast with Berlin, is a city of the middle 
ages — balconies projecting into the streets, old forms and fashions 
about the people and their dwellings — nothing of the Parisian air, 
nothing of the Frenchified German air about them. Everything is 
downright German.,and plain unsophisticated German burgess style. 
This is the capital of the middle class of Germany — of the class which 
has nothing to do with nobility, or with military, or civil service as 
a way of living, which has not its great money merchants, bankers, 
contractors of loans, millionaires, like Frankfort; but has its very 
substantial, and some very wealthy, quiet-living burgesses. The 
traveller who could get into the domestic society of this town — 
which even native Germans cannot easily do — would see, it is 
said, more of old Germany, more of the houses, habits, and modes 
of living of two centuries ago, than in any other place. A very 
respectable people these Leipsickers are, and precisely because they 
affect to be nothing more. Their book trade is of such import- 
ance, that the booksellers, of whom there are reckoned at the 



128 • BOOK-TRADE OF LEIPSIC : 

fairs about 560, and many of them settled in Leipsic, have a large 
Exchange of their own to transact their business in. It is not, 
however, the printing and publishing in Leipsic itself, that is the 
basis of these book fairs, but the barter of publications between 
booksellers meeting there from different points. The bookseller, 
perhaps, from Kiel on the Baltic, meets and exchanges publica- 
tions with the bookseller, perhaps, from Zurich, gives so many 
copies of his publication — a dull sermon possibly — for so many 
of the other's — an entertaining novel. Each gets an assortment 
of goods by this traffic, such as he knows will suit his customers, 
out of a publication of which he could not, perhaps, sell a score 
of copies within his own circle ; but a score sold in every book- 
selling circle in Germany gets rid of an edition. Suppose the work 
out and out stupid and unsaleable, still it has its value ; it is ex- 
changeable, should it be only at the value of wrapping-paper, for 
works less unsaleable, and puts the publisher in possession of a 
saleable stock and of a variety of works. His pro tit also not de- 
pending altogether upon the merit of the one work he publishes, 
but upon the assortment for sale he can make out of it by barter, 
he can afford to publish works of a much lower class as to merit, 
or saleable properties, than English publishers. The risk is di- 
vided, and also the loss, and not merely divided among all the 
booksellers who take a part of an edition in exchange for part of 
their own publications ; but in effect is divided among the pub- 
lications. The standard work, or the new publication of an 
author of celebrity, pays the risk or loss of the publisher of the 
bad, unsaleable work, as by it he is put in possession of the for- 
mer, of the more saleable goods. The loss, also, compared to that 
of an English publisher, is trifling, because, although the German 
press can deliver magnificent books, yet the general taste of the 
public for neat, fine, well-finished productions in printing, as in 
all the useful arts, is not by any means so fully developed as with 
us, and is satisfied with very inferior paper made of much 
cheaper materials. The publisher also is saved the very import- 
ant expense of stitching, boarding, or binding all he publishes, by 
his own capital, the private buyer generally taking his books in 
.sheets. The bound or made up books in booksellers' shops are 
but few, and generally only those of periodical or light literature. 
The advantage to literature of this system into which the book 
trade has settled, is that hundreds of works see the light, which 
with us would never get to the printing-house at all. The dis- 
advantage is that it encourages a prolixity of style, both in 



ITS EFFECTS ON LITERATURE. 12) 

thinking and expression, two or three ideas are spun out into a 
volume, and literature is actually overwhelmed and buried under 
its own fertility and fruits. Ko human powers could wade 
through the flood of publication poured out every half year upon 
every conceivable subject. Selection even, in such an over- 
whelming mass is out of the question, nuless the catalogue- 
selection of judging from the reputation of the author, that the 
book may be worth reading. In our small book-world, periodical 
criticism — our quarterlies and literary newspapers — keeps the 
ordinary reader up to the current stream of literary production ; 
but who could get through the pile of periodicals published in 
Germany, and find time to eat, drink, and sleep ? It is as at their 
table d'hote — the guest tastes this thing, and tastes that, and rises 
without having made so wholesome and substantial a meal as he 
would have done from one or two dishes. This superabundance, 
and the excess of employment to the mind about other people's 
ideas, influences the general literature of Germany. Men, whose 
talents entitle them to be original in literary production, are but 
imitative. Their great original authors, Goethe, Schiller, or 
Richter, or our great authors, Shakspeare, Scott, Byrcn, give the 
tunes which the crowd of German writers are whistling through 
the streets. This imitative turn, and the excess of literary pro- 
duction, influence even the material interests and character of 
the German people. In politics, in social economy, in religion, 
and perhaps even in morals, and the regulation of conduct, 
principles and opinions seem to have no time to take root, and to 
influence the actual doings of men — conviction is but loosely 
connected with action. The latter by no means follows the for- 
mer, even when not drawn aside by prejudice, passion, or self- 
interest. All is speculation, not reality. Every German seems 
to have two worlds for himself — a world of idea, and a world of 
reality ; and the former appears to have as little connection with, 
the latter, as the evening of the monarch on the stage with the 
morning of the actor in his lodgings. This division of life into 
two distinct existences, this living in a world of reveries, this 
wide separation between ideas and realities, between thoughts 
and actions, common perhaps to all men of intellectual cultivation, 
is so widely diffused in Germany, that it sensibly influences its 
social economy. All evaporates in speculation. Books, and 
theories, and principles, are published and read, and there the 
matttr rests. A new set of books, theories, and principles, 
is published, and overwhelms the first, but all k this never goes 

I 



130 BOOK-TRADE OF LEIPSIC : 

beyond the world of idea in winch half their existence is passed. 
Improvement, reform, movement of any kind in social business 
or real life, either for the better or the worse, stand still, because 
real life is but half their existence. Leave them the other half, 
their ideal world, to expatiate in — and that cannot be circum- 
scribed by any kind of government — and they quietly put up 
with restrictions and burdens in real life, which in our social 
economy would not be endured. Energy of mind and vigour of 
action in the real affairs of ordinary life are diluted and weakened 
by this life of dreamy speculation. We sometimes see indi- 
viduals among ourselves, novel-reading, romantic youths, forming 
a little world for themselves from the shelves of the circulating 
library, and dreaming away life in it. The literature, scholarship, 
and wide diffusion of the culture of the imaginative faculty in 
Germany are, in this view, actually detrimental to the social 
development of the German people, to their industry, material 
interests, and activity in ordinary affairs of a mechanical kind, 
and to their energy and interest in claiming and exercising civil 
liberty or free-agency in real life. 

This double existence of the Germans accounts for some pe- 
culiarities in German literature. German authors, both the 
philosophic and the poetic, address themselves to a public far 
more intellectual and more highly cultivated than our reading 
public. They address themselves, in fact, in their philosophical 
works, like the ancient Greek philosophers, to schools or bodies 
of disciples who must have attained a peculiar and considerable 
cultivation of mind to understand them. The philosophy of 
Kant occupied Schiller, we are told in his biography, for three 
years of intense and exclusive study. In our literature, the 
most obscure and abstruse of metaphysical or philosophical 
writers take the public mind in a far lower state, simply cogni- 
sant of the meaning of language, and possessed of the ordinary 
reasoning powers. Locke, Dugald Stewart, Held, Smith, Hume, 
require nothing more. Shakspeare, Scott, Byron, require nothing 
more. German literature, even of the imaginative class, requires a 
highly cultivated imaginative faculty from the readers. Goethe's 
Faust, his Wilhelm Meister, many >of Schiller's tragedies, all 
of Jean Paul Eichters productions, require readers trained, 
like the readers of Kant or Fichte, in a certain school, and to a 
certain considerable intellectual culture. Their philosophers 
and poets do not, like ours, address themselves to the meanest 
capacity. The social influence of German literature is, conse- 



ITS EFFECTS ON LITERATURE. 131 

quently, confined within a narrower circle. It has no influence 
on the mindof the lower, or even of the middle classes in active 
life, who have not the opportunity or leisure to screw their 
faculties up to the pitch-note of their great writers. The read- 
ing public must devote much time to acquire the knowledge, 
tone of feeling, and of imagination, necessary to follow the 
writing public. The social economist finds accordingly in Ger- 
many the most extraordinary dulness, inertness of mind, and 
ignorance, below a certain level, with the most extraordinary 
intellectual development, learning, and genius at or above it — 
the most extraordinary intellectual contrast between the profes- 
sional reading classes, and the lower or even middle non-reading 
classes engaged in the ordinary affairs of life. 

Another peculiarity in German literature arising from the 
social economy of the country, is, that the class of literary compo- 
sition to which the works of Shakspeare, Cervantes, Scott, Le 
Sage, Fielding, Goldsmith, belong as pictures of natural action 
and character, is poorly filled up. Situation and plot, not deli- 
neations of characters and incidents " true to nature," are the 
points on which the highest efforts of dramatic and poetic genius 
in German literature are the most happy. It is in the ideal 
world that the German mind is developed. The action of man 
upon man, the development of character and individual pecu- 
liarity by free social movement, are so restricted and tied down 
to uniformity by the social economy of Germany, that the author 
in this class of composition finds no type of reality around him 
for the imagination to work upon. It would be difficult to 
point out any character, speech, or passage from the German 
drama that has become popular literature — understood, felt, 
brought home to himself by the common man in Germany, in 
the same way that characters, expressions, verses, sentiments 
from Shakspeare, Burns, De Foe, Scott, are familiar to all of 
the slightest education in the same classes in Scotland or 
England. German literature is perhaps of a far higher cast, 
but it is not so widely diffused through the mass of the social 
body as our literature, although the class of people addicting 
themselves to it as a means of living, are more numerous 
than the literary class in Britain : and German literature is 
certainly less influential than ours on the public mind and social 
economy. 

The theatre in Germany, and in all countries which have no 
civil liberty, no freedom of action independent of government, 



132 GERMAN THEATRE ITS INFLUENCE. 

and no free discussion of public affairs, occupies an important 
position in its social economy, is reckoned a great educational 
and social influence, a power not to be entrusted out of the 
hands of the state. The fictitious incidents of the drama 
supersede the real incidents and interests of life. In reading of 
the organisation of the Prussian government, the simple English 
reader stares at finding among the ministers of state for home 
affairs, for military affairs, for ecclesiastical affairs, a minister of 
state for theatrical affairs. He can understand that from con- 
siderations of police, the theatre may be, as with us, under a 
censorship, and its superintendence attached to some office about 
the court; but that theatres are of such importance as to be 
held a subject for distinct administration, and one on which 
considerable sums of the public revenues are regularly expended, 
appears extraordinary to one coming from our social state, in 
which dramatic representation is of no social influence what- 
soever — in which it is held to be of no moral or educational 
value — in which theatrical performers of high talent cannot get 
bread in cities s.s populous and wealthy as Berlin. The social 
economist hastens to visit the German theatres, to satisfy him- 
self that there is no mistake about this supposed social influence 
of the stage — to see the working of this court-machine for 
education on the public mind, — to see the number and quality 
of the usual kind of audiences, as much as to see the play. 

Germany is reckoned to have 65 theatres, employing about 
2,147 actors and actresses, about 1.229 singers, male and female, 
about 448 dancers, and about 1,273 fiddlers and other musicians. 
About 5,000 people in all are on the theatrical establishments of 
Germany as the personale, without including tradesmen or others 
not on the boards. The Hof-theater, or court theatre, is a 
necessary appendage to every little residence or capital; and it is 
understood that the deficit in the expense of a well-appointed the- 
atre in a small population is made up by the state. In Berlin, even 
with a great and pleasure-seeking population, it is said the 
theatres cost the country about <£ 15,000 a year, besides the re- 
ceipts. At Berlin there are three theatres in constant work, 
Sunday evenings not excepted, and an Italian and a French 
troop are also in activity part of the year. The houses are of 
moderate size, elegant, and in scenery, dresses, and especially in 
the orchestral department, very perfect. The prices of admission 
are extremely low. In Berlin, for instance, you pay 15 groshen 
at the German theatre, or 20 at the Italian opera, viz. Is. 6cL 



GERMAN THEATRE — ITS INFLUENCE. 133 

or 2,9. for a seat in the parquet, or front division of the pit of 
our theatres, with the advantage that each sitting is numbered, 
and the seat folded back, and your ticket bears the number of 
your seat, so that be the house ever so full, you get to it without 
squeezing or crowding: — great inducements these to go to the 
play. The time and patience of the public also, as well as their 
money, are respected by these state players. Owing, no doubt, 
to their superior discipline, a, long five-act tragedy — such, for 
instance, as Schiller's Marie Stewart or Cabale unci Liebe, — which 
with us would keep the audience gaping till half-past eleven, or 
perhaps till midnight, is performed between six and half-past 
nine. The play-bill tells when the performance ends, as well as 
when it begins, and even when three pieces are given, half-past 
nine is the latest hour. These are unquestionably great induce- 
ments to a good theatrical attendance of the public. But 
governments cannot force the intellectual movement of a people. 
They may establish schools, theatres, and churches, as educational 
means, but the using these means must be the impulse of the 
people themselves. You look in vain for the public in a 
German theatre. The public is more scarce in it than in our 
own. You see the travelling strangers, and the young people 
of the middle class, such as clerks, tradesmen, or students, when 
any celebrated actor or play appears ; and on opera nights, the up- 
per classes : but the people, the real people, the German equivalent, 
if there be any, to John Bull, you never see. If this lower class 
ever come to the theatres at all, they sit as quiet as mice in the 
little hole allotted them. A German theatre is a true picture 
of the social state of Germany — princes and functionaries oc- 
cupying the front boxes — the educated and middle classes look- 
ing up to them from the pit below, in breathless awe and 
admiration, and the people out of sight and hearing of these 
two masses of the audience. As a social influence acting on the 
public mind, the German stage is of as little real importance as 
our own. It has to rear for itself the kind of public to whom 
it is of any importance. A theatrical corps and expenditure no 
doubt does raise a public for itself in the towns, and to them 
the theatre becomes important, perhaps a great deal too im- 
portant, and too influential in educating the mind of that class 
to a sort of dreamy, imaginative, inactive life, to an undue value 
for appearance, show, and dress, and to an inaptness to encounter 
the rough realities of their social position. The social influence 



134 SCOTCH AND GERMANS COMPARED. 

of the drama is in this class — and this is the only class it effect- 
ually works upon — a positive evil, not a good. 

What are the social institutions which educate a people, which 
form their moral, intellectual, and national character? In this 
land of schools and theatres, here where every individual is drilled 
into reading, writing, and the catechism; and the church, the 
playhouse, and the press, are all under the special management 
■ of the governments as influential means for the improvement of 
the people, in what state is the mind of the people in Germany, 
morally and intellectually'? 

To come to any satisfactory conclusion on these questions, 
we must define what is meant by the people. The Continental 
man generally means by the people the lower ranks of the 
middle class — the artisans, journeymen, servants, and tradesmen 
about towns, living more or less by educated labour, and having 
some degree of taste, leisure, and refinement. We mean by the 
people the labouring mass of a nation, living principally by agri- 
cultural work, and in every country constituting the mass of the 
population. We must compare this lower class in Germany 
w^th the same class amongst ourselves, and endeavour to find 
out the difference, and the causes of the difference in the physi- 
cal and intellectual condition in each country of this lowest class 
of all in the commun.ty. 

It is a peculiar feature in the social condition of our lowest 
labouring class in Scotland, that none perhaps in Europe of the 
same class have so few physical, and so many intellectual wants 
and gratifications. Luxury or even comfort in diet, or lodging, 
is unknown. Oatmeal, milk, potatoes, kail, herrings, and rarely 
salt meat, are the chief food ; a wretched, dark, damp, mud- 
floored hovel, the usual kind of dwelling; dirt, disorder, sluttish- 
ness, and not too much good temper at the fireside, the ordinary 
habits of living; yet with these wants and discomforts in their 
physical condition, which is far below that of the same class 
abroad, we never miss a book, perhaps a periodical, a sitting in 
the kirk, a good suit of clothes for Sunday wear, and an argu- 
ment every day amounting to controversy, almost to quarrel, 
with some equally argumentacious neighbour upon subjects far 
above the reach of mind of the common man in other countries, 
and often carried on with an acuteness, intelligence, and play of 
mental power, especially in the discussion of abstract philosophical 
or religious subjects, which the educated classes in other countries 



SCOTCH AND GERMANS COMPARED. 135 

scarcely attain, and which are strangely in contrast with the 
wants in their physical condition. The labouring man's sub- 
scriptions in Scotland to his book-club, his newspaper turn, his 
Bible society, his missionary society, his kirk and minister if he 
be a seceder, and his neighbourly aid of the distressed, are ex- 
penditure upon intellectual and moral gratifications of a higher 
cast than music-scraping, singing, dancing, playgoing, novel- 
reading, or other diversions of a much higher class of people in 
Germany. The Scotch labouring man gives yearly considerable 
contributions to spread civilisation and Christianity among 
people much better off, far more daintily fed, lodged, and clothed, 
in more physical comfort, and much farther removed from the 
wants and hardships of an uncivilized condition, than he is him- 
self. This may be foolish, but it is noble and ennobling in the 
character of the lowest class of a people. The half-yearly shil- 
ling given in all sincerity of purpose by the cottar-tenant of a^ 
turf-built hovel on a barren Scotch muirland, to aid the missions 
for converting the South Sea Islanders or the Hindoos, is the 
noblest-paid money, as far as regards the giver, in the Queen's 
dominions. There is also in the mind of the common man of 
Scotland an imaginative thread interwoven somehow, and often 
very queer! y, with his hard, dry, precise way of thinking and 
acting in ordinary affairs, which makes the whole labouring 
class in Scotland of higher intellectuality than the same class in 
other countries. We ofter hear, what country but Scotland 
ever produced a Burns among her peasantry? Bat the real 
question of the social economist is, what country but Scotland 
ever produced a peasantry for whom a Burns could write? 
Burns had a public of his own in his own station in life, who 
could feel and appreciate his poetry, long before he was known 
to the upper class of Scotch people, and in fact he was never 
known or appreciated by the upper class. In other countries it 
is the poetry of the higher educated class that works down to the 
people ; as the poetiy of Ariosto or Tasso, among the Italians ; 
of the Xiebelung, of the Saga, of the lays of the Troubadours, 
among the German, Scandinavian, and French people; or as 
ballads of Burger, Goethe, and Schiller are said to be now 
working downwards in Germany, and becoming folkslieder, — the 
songs and poetry of the people. But where have been poets 
belonging to the labouring class called into song by their own 
class? This is more extraordinary than the genius of the indi- 
vidual himself, this genius of the class for whom he composed. 



133 SCOTCH AND GERMANS COMPARED. 

Is there any spark of this intellectual spirit among the common 
labouring people in the finer soils and climates of Europe? or 
does the little exertion of mind with which all physical wants 
may he supplied, and many physical enjoyments obtained in 
abundance, tend to form a heavy, material, unintellectual cha- 
racter, among the labouring class in Germany, which is con- 
firmed by the state of pupillage and non-exertion of mind in 
which they are educated and kept by their governments ] while 
the mind of the Scotch labouring man is stirred up and in per- 
petual exercise by the self-dependence, exertion, privation, fore- 
thought, moral restraint, and consideration required in his social 
position in which neither climate nor poor-rate, neither natural 
nor artificial facilities of living without. thinking, allow him to 
sink into apathy or mental indolence? 

But there are other educational influences, of far more im- 
portant action in forming the intellectual character of a people 
than schools or theatres, which the German people want, and 
the British possess. The social economist, who reflects upon 
our crowded open courts of law in the ordinary course of their 
business at Westminster Hall, or at the Court of Session, at the 
assizes or circuits, or sheriff-courts, in short, wherever any kind 
of judicial business is going on, and upon the eagerness and 
attention with which the common people follow out the pro- 
ceedings even in cases of no public interest, will consider the 
bar, with its public oral pleadings, examinations of witnesses, 
and reasonings on events, a most important instrument in our 
national education. Whoever attends to the ordinary run of 
conversation among our middle and lower classes will think it 
no exaggeration to say, that the bar is more influential than the 
•pulpit, in forming the public mind, and in educating and exer- 
cising the mental powers of the people. It is a perpetual exercise 
in applying principle to actions, and actions to principle. This 
unceasing course of moral and intellectual education, enjoyed by 
our very lowest class in every locality, is wanting in Germany 
in general, owing to the different mode of judicial procedure in 
closed courts, by written pleadings, or private hearings of argu- 
ment, and private examinations of facts and witnesses. Law 
and justice are, perhaps, as well administered in the one way 
as in the other ; but the effects on the public mind, on the moral 
training of the character, and on the intellectuality and judg- 
ment of the common people, are very different. All schools for 
the people, all systems of national education, sink into insigni- 



INFLUENCE OF THE PRESS. 137 

ficance, compared to the working of this vast open school for the 
public mind. We see its influence in the public press. Law 
cases are found to be the most interesting as well as the most 
instructive reading for the people, and our newspapers fill their 
columns with them. This taste has arisen also in France, since 
France has enjoyed open courts of law; and it is one of the 
most striking proofs of the social progress of the French people, 
that their theatres are deserted, and their courts of law crowded, 
and that their popular newspapers now report all interesting 
civil or criminal law cases. 

Another great educational influence wanting in Germany, is 
the moving moral diorama of human affairs and interests pre- 
sented to the public mind by our newspaper press. This liter- 
ature of the common people is unknown in Germany. Foreign 
newspapers do not furnish food for the mind of the common 
man. The newspaper public abroad is of a higher, more intel- 
lectual, more educated cast, than ours ; but therefore more cir- 
cumscribed — a public of professional men, functionaries, scholars, 
men of acquirements far above those of the mass of the people. 
It is to them, not to the people, that the press, both the literary 
and the periodical, and the pulpit also, in Germany, address 
themselves, by far too exclusively; and the mass of the people, 
the labourers and peasantry, are lost sight of. If we come down 
in German literature to what is intelligible to this lowest class, 
we find a great vacuity not filled up by those daily or weekly 
accounts of the real affairs and local business passing around 
them, which our country newspapers furnish to the mind of the 
common man, and which exercise and educate his intellectual 
and moral powers. 

The strictness — pharisaical strictness it may be — with which 
the repose of Sunday is observed in England, and particularly 
in Scotland — the complete abstinence not merely from work, 
but from amusement, is unquestionably a powerful educational 
influence in our social economy. Its religious value is not here 
considered. It may possibly produce as much hypocrisy as 
piety. But viewing it simply in its influence on the intellectual 
^culture of a people, and comparing its effects with the intellectual 
culture produced by the round of amusement to which Sunday 
is devoted on the Continent, the social economist will not hesitate 
to say that our strict observance, where it is the voluntary action 
of the public mind, and not an observance enforced by kirk 
sessions and town bailies, is of a higher educational tendency, 



138 RELIGIOUS OBSERVANCE OF SUNDAY. 

and both indicates and produces a more intellectual character. 
The common man is thrown by it upon his own mental resources, 
reflections, and ideas, be they religious or not. He is not a mere 
recipient of fatigue for six days, and of amusement for one, with- 
out thought or mental exertion in the one state more than in 
the other — which is the Continental man's existence; but for 
one day he is in repose, and, without taking religion at all into 
consideration, is in a state of leisure, in which he is thrown back 
upon reflection, judgment, memory of what he knows or has 
heard, and upon considering and reasoning upon his own affairs, 
whether spiritual or temporal. It is a valuable pause from 
manual labour, which, if filled up by mere amusement, is lost as 
to intellectual culture. 

The want of religious dissent, and consequently of religious 
discussion among the people, is also the want of a powerful 
means of educating, and sharpening by controversy, the intellec- 
tual faculties of the lower orders of Germany. 

The want also of public or common business, small or great, 
to discuss, or influence by their opinions or votes, and in which 
they can act freely, and according to their own will and judg- 
ment, without superintendence and control, tells fearfully against 
the development of the human intellect in this lowest class in 
Germany. It is the same cause, only in less intensity of force 
— viz., the want of exercise and excitement of the mental^powers 
■ — which reduces to idiotcy or imbecility the inmate of the silent 
penitentiary. Here, in Germany, the government, and the whole 
social economy of the country, remove systematically all exercise 
of mental powers from the people, and reduce the common work- 
ing German peasantry, the lowest but greatest class in the com- 
munity, to a lower state of intellectuality than we are acquainted 
with in Great Britain; where, even in the most remote and 
solitary situations, there is, owing to the nature of our social 
economy and institutions, a perpetual stream of exciting and 
educating influences and circumstances acting on the mind of 
the common man. Here, this lowest class of the population are, 
intellectually, but big children who know their letters. They 
are in a state of extreme inertness of mind. Take one of our 
uneducated people who can neither write nor read, converse with 
him, try his good sense, his judgment, his powers of comprehend- 
ing, deciding, and acting within his sphere, and we find that the 
education of realities in our free social state, through which this 
ignorant man's mind has passed in the various exciting circum- 



WANT OF MENTAL EXERCISE IN GERMANY. 139 

stances, which, in our social condition, daily exercise the faculties 
of every man in every station, has actually brought him to a 
higher intellectual and moral state, — has made him a more think- 
ing, energetic, right-acting character, than the passive human 
beings of the same class in Germany, who have had the educa- 
tion of the schools, but without the practical exercise of the 
mental powers afterwards in their social relations. 

The blessings of school education let no man undervalue but 
in our zeal for the education ot the people let us not take the 
show for the substance, and imagine their education to consist 
in reading and writing, and not in the exercise and enjoyment 
of their own mental powers as free agents, acting in their own 
civil, political, moral, and religious duties as men and members 
of society. National schools, and theatres, and all that can be 
taught or represented by governments on the German system, 
are but poor substitutes for that education through the real 
business of life which can only be given to a people by free 
social institutions. The most educated countries in the present 
age give little encouragement to the philanthropist who expects, 
from a general diffusion of school-education, a higher moral cha- 
racter, and an efficient check upon crime, among a people. The 
most generally educated nation in Europe is unquestionably the 
Swedish. It is stated by Colonel Forsell, the Director of the 
Statistical Board of Sweden, in his valuable work, "Statistik 
ofver Sverige," that not so many as one in a thousand of the 
total population of Sweden, who are not incapable of instruction 
from mental or bodily infirmity, is unable to read and write, 
and the few who cannot are aged persons of a past generation, 
in which school-education was not so generally diffused and 
enforced. Religious instruction also is universal; because no 
person can be married, or perform any act as major in years, 
before taking the sacrament, after the rite of confirmation, and, 
on both occasions, going through preparatory instruction, and a 
suitable examination by the clergyman, who in this duty is 
strictly watched over by his superiors. Sweden being geo- 
graphically and politically isolated, and detached from other 
countries — being almost entirely agricultural, with little com- 
merce or manufacture, and with no great assemblages of its 
population in cities or large towns — and being provided also with 
a government which is a model of well-intended interference with 
all the interests of the people, ought to present to the world a 
pictUxfe oi the happy results of an universal national education 



^-^™™^™ 



140 WANT OF MENTAL EXERCISE IN GERMANY. 

and religious instruction, of a more perfect system of school and 
church education, than any country in Europe has been able to 
establish. It is not without dismay, therefore, that on turning 
to the criminal, statistics of this generally educated people, we 
find that the amount of criminal offences, in proportion to the 
numbers of the population, exceed greatly those of England, 
Scotland, or Ireland, which are certainly not educated countries 
— that the numbers of illegitimate children, and of divorces from 
the marriage tie — both undeniable tests of the moral condition of 
a people — are vastly greater. This statistical fact was so unex- 
pected, so contrary to the generally received opinion, that school 
education must of itself diminish the tendency to crime in a 
country, that it was supposed the number of commitments in a 
year for mere conventional police transgressions, involving no 
moral delinquency, had been numbered as crimes in the state- 
ment made by the author of these Notes in his tour in Sweden; 
and the minister of Sweden at the Court of St. James, the Count 
Biornstierna, published a pamphlet to refute his calumnies. But 
statistic?<l facts are stubborn things. On examining the official 
lists of crimes tried before the courts in the course of a year, and 
published by authority of government, it was proved that the 
murders, rapes, robberies, and acts which are criminal in all 
countries, exceeded very far, in proportion to the population, 
the number of the same crimes in our unschooled dense popula- 
tion. The just inference is — not that school education is useless 
as a restraint upon crime — but that a people kept, as in Sweden, 
in a state of pupilage under educational, clerical, and civil func- 
tionaries, and privileged classes, without free action in their own 
social and moral duties, derive no benefit from the school acquire- 
ments of reading, writing, and repeating the catechism — that 
these, as stated above, are but poor substitutes for that education 
through the real business of life, which can only be given to a 
people by free social institutions. 



THE RHINE. \ {\ 



CHAPTER IX. 

NOTES ON THE RHINE. — SWITZERLAND. — SWISS CHARACTER CHURCH OF GENEVA 

— SWISS SCENERY. 

The Rhine is, no doubt, an historical river; hut the political 
economist reads history in its stream differently from the scholar 
or the antiquarian. This river has been flowing these two 
thousand years through the centre of European civilisation — yet 
how little industry or traffic upon its waters! not one river 
barge in ten miles of river! Is not this the effect of faulty 
social economy, of bad government, of restricted freedom among 
the twenty or thirty millions of people dwelling in communica- 
tion with this great water-way? Is it not a bitter historical 
satire on the feudal institutions which have so long reigned on 
either side of this river 1 In America, rivers not half a century 
old to any human knowledge, are teeming with floating craft, 
exchanging industry for industry between rising cities, and 
communities of free self-governing men. This ancient river 
Rhine flows stately and silently through vast populations of 
feudally governed countries, and like one of its own dignified 
old barons, caring little for industry, commerce, and civilisation, 
but sweeping in. lonely grandeur between robber castles of former 
days, modern fortifications, decaying towns, military and custom- 
house sentinels and functionaries, and beneath vine-dotted hills, 
around which the labouring man toils, and climbs, and lives, as 
he did a thousand years ago, without improvement, or advance 
of any importance, in his social condition. Is this the Rhine, the 
ancient Rhine, — the Rhine that boasts of commerce, literature, 
science, law, government, religion, having all sprung up in 
modern times upon its banks — this river, with half a dozen 
steamers carrying idle lady and gentlemen passengers up and 
down to view the scenery, and a solitary barge here and there 
creeping along its sides? Truly the American rivers, under the 
democratical American governments and social system, have 
shot ahead, in half a century, of this European river under the 
aristocratical European governments and social system, although 
the European has had the start of the American streams by 



142 THE RHINE. 

fifteen hundred or two thousand years. When Prince Mitternich 
sits in his window-seat in his castle of Johannisberg, reading in 
some book of travels about the Ohio, or Mississippi, or Hudson, 
all teeming with the activity and civilizing industry of free, 
unrestricted men, what may be his thoughts w^hen he lifts his 
eyes from the hook, and looks down upon the Rhine? It is 
here that the American traveller may be allowed to prose, at 
long and at large, upon his favourite topic — the superiority of 
American institutions and government. '. He may begin his 
glorifications at Cologne, and end them at Basle, without inter- 
ruption. 

The two small populations at the two extremities of the Rhine, 
the Swiss and the Dutch, far apart from, and unconnected with 
each other, and in all physical circumstances of country, soil, 
climate, means of subsistence, and objects of industry, as distinct 
and different as two groups of human beings well can be, are 
yet morally and nationally very like to each other. The same 
spirit in their social economy, and a similar struggle to attain 
and preserve independence and free political arrangements in 
their countries, have produced a striking similarity of character 
in the two populations. The Swiss are the Dutchmen of the 
mountains. They are the same cold, unimaginative, money- 
seeking, yet vigorous, determined, energetic people, as the Dutch 
of the mouths of the Rhine. In private household life the 
same order and cleanliness, attention to small things, plodding, 
persevering industry, and addiction to gain, predominate in the 
character of both, and as citizens, the same reverence for law, 
and common sense, the same zeal for public good, the same 
intense love of country, and, hidden under a phlegmatic exterior, 
the same capability of great energy, and sacrifices for it. The 
Swiss, being less wealthy, but far more generally above want 
and pauperism than the Dutch, retain, perhaps, more of the 
virtues connected with patriotism; and their two-and-twenty 
distinct governments, all more or less liberal in form, and the 
necessity of watchfulness and energy in their united general 
government, keep alive in every man a spirit of devotedness to 
his country, which the traveller looks for in vain among the 
peasantry of the monarchical states w T hich allow no free action, 
or participation in public interests, to their subjects. The Swiss 
cantons bicker and quarrel among themselves as the American 
United States do ; but, like the dogs in a snow-traineau, they 
get on together not the less rapidly for their barking and 



SWITZERLAND. 143 

biting — and a common object in view silences all differences. 
Some political observers conceive that this republican bundle of 
two-and-twenty distinct states, different in laws, religion, and 
language, and placed between three monarchies, jealous of the 
prosperity, and especially of the exan^le of such free institutions, 
has but a very precarious lease of existence in its present 
independent federal constitution. This is a mistaken view. 
The best and surest defence of a country consists in its power 
of aggression. Switzerland has eminently this aggressive power 
— could throw a ball of fire from the Alps into the plains of 
Italy, which would kindle a flame that Austria or Sardinia 
could not quench ; and with the south of France in no cordial 
subjection to the reigning family, has a powerful moral aggressive 
force on that side also. Her population, too, is one of military 
habits, united in sentiment for the independence of the country, 
accustomed to the use of arms, and the country strong in its 
ruggedness for its local defence by the inhabitants. Switzer- 
land is in reality a heavier power in the European balance than 
some of the little kingdoms, such as Wurtemburg, Hanover, 
Denmark. Sweden, which class themselves among the secondary 
powers, and look upon the Swiss confederated states as of very 
inferior importance to their own. 

The Swiss appear to be a people very destitute of imagination, 
and its influences — remarkably blind to the glorious scenery in 
which they live. Rousseau, the only imaginative writer Switzer- 
land has ever produced, observes, "that the people and their 
country do not seem made for each other." There is much 
truth in the observation. Men of all nations, excepting of the 
Swiss nation itself, and of almost every station in life, are met 
with in Switzerland wandering from scene to scene, pilgrims 
paying homage at every lake and mountain, to the magnificence 
of the scenery. The Swiss himself is apparently without any 
feeling of this kind. If it be possible to build out a fine view, 
or to put down a house exactly where one with any eye or 
feeling for the beauty of situation or scenery, would not place it, 
there the traveller may reckon upon finding the mansion and 
offices of the wealthy class of the Swiss, who could afford to 
indulge a taste, if they had it, for the fine scenery of their land. 
The Swiss speculators in hotels and lodging houses for strangers, 
who are a numerous and respectable class, are altogether puzzled 
at the unaccountable preferences the strangers give to cottages 
on the lake side, to single houses, or inns in the little villages, 



144 SWISS CHARACTER. 

instead of their superb chateaus in the middle of a market 'town, 
or built out from every prospect by magnificent office houses. 
The Swiss, in truth, are altogether utilitarian. Material interests 
are at the top, bottom, and middle of their minds. They have 
not a spark of fancy in their moral composition, no delusion of 
themselves, or others. Yet, without imagination, they have 
great energy, great patriotism; and a strong sense of public duty; 
and, with their military habits, these are more to be depended 
upon for the stubborn defence of their country and its institu- 
tions, than a temporary volatile enthusiasm. This peculiar spirit 
and character maybe ascribed to the peculiar occupation of a great 
portion of the Swiss people. They have for ages been the 
hirelings of Europe, either in public or private service, as soldiers, 
or as domestic servants. Pay has for ages been the only in- 
fluence in general and constant operation on the Swiss mind 
in every class of society, and has weakened the efficiency of any 
higher influences and feelings in affairs, than self-interest. Point 
d? argent, ])oi?it de Suisse, has extended from their military to all 
their social relations. A great proportion of the young men of 
Switzerland have small farms, or houses, with portions of land, 
aud rights to grazings in the Alp of their native parishes, to 
succeed to upon the death of their parents ; but, until that event 
in their social position, they are supernumeraries at home, their 
labour not being necessary for cultivating the paternal acres, 
and their subsistence more, perhaps, than the land can afford. 
They have no colonies to migrate to, no labour to turn to, except 
labour of skill, which all cannot learn, or live by, and no con- 
siderable manufacturing employment, except in two or three 
cantons, to absorb their numbers, and they enlist, therefore, 
readily for a few years in Swiss regiments in foreign service. 
France, after the restoration of the Bourbons, had, if I mistake 
not, about 17,000 men of Swiss regiments; and the disgust of 
the French nation at the preference shown to these mercenaries 
was a main cause of the expulsion of Charles X. Naples has 
at present four regiments of these mercenaries, Rome as marly ; 
and it is reckoned that from 8,000 to 10,000 Swiss are in foreign 
service at present, embodied generally in Swiss regiments distinct 
from the native troops of the country. They are the condottieri 
of the middle ages, serving for their pay, and without any other 
principle, or attachment, real, or assumed, or any pretext of 
higher motive for their service. In other services, the rudest 
soldier, the most arrant scamp, the vagabond, the deserter from 



SWISS CHARACTER. 145 

other regiments, lays the flattering unction to his soul, that 
destiny, folly, hard necessity, wildness of youth, love of distinc- 
tion, of country, of honour, something, in short, connected with 
principle or fate, has led him into the military sex-vice. But 
these Swiss have no principle, real or imaginary, but pay. They 
engage generally for terms of four or six years, and receive a 
bounty of one Napoleon for each year they engage for. This 
bounty is not paid to them in full upon enlistment, but a portion 
of it is placed to their credit in their livret, or book, which every 
private has in foreign services, and is paid to them at the expiry , 
of their engagements, to enable them to return home from the * 
port of Genoa, to which those serving in Italy are sent free of 
expense, if they do not choose to re-engage for a new term of 
years. They receive much higher pay than the native troops. 
A subaltern in a Swiss regiment in the Neapolitan service told 
me his pay is better than that of a captain in a Neapolitan 
regiment. The men receive four gran and bread, and the elite, 
or old soldiers who have re-enlisted, five gran per day, and their 
ration of eight ounces of meat costs but three gran. They are 
consequently well off as soldiers, are always in good quarters, 
and under their own Swiss officers, and, both at Naples and Rome, 
are undoubtedly fine, well appointed troops. Scotland formerly 
furnished the same kind of condottieri to Holland, Sweden, and 
France, but the advance of industry and manufacture at home, 
the colonisation of America, and the demand of England for 
labour from the poorer country, extinguished this kind of mili- 
tary service ; nor was it in Scotland so devoid of all connection 
with principle, so entirely mercenary, as the Swiss enlistments 
of the present day. The Scotch peasant enlisted under his 
clansman, or the son of his landlord, who from attachment to 
the Stuart cause, or difference of religion, or from national 
prejudice, preferred foreign service to the British, even with 
inferior pay. The recruiting also for foreign service was un- 
acknowledged and private. But the Swiss government sanctions 
this demoralising system, allows the recruiting publicly, and with 
the same protection and regulation as for a national army; and 
sells, for the benefit of a few aristocratic families, principally of 
Bern, who officer these mercenaries, the military services of her 
young men to support the most arbitrary governments in Europe. 
The Protestant republic of Bern furnishes onp regiment entirely 
for the service of the king of Naples, and even in the Pope's body 
guards there are Protestants from Bern and other Protestant 

L 



liG SWISS CHARACTER. 

cantons. No government can set principle at defiance with 
impunity. These men return to their little spots of land, devoid 
of religious habits, or feelings, or attachment to any religious 
faith. This service keeps up through the whole population of 
Switzerland, principles and conduct adverse to religious cha- 
racter. The men wdio thus enlist to pass their youth in the 
most vicious and bigoted cities in Europe — Naples and Rome 
— are not the refuse of their country, but the sons of respectable 
peasants, who are to return to their little heritages and marry, 
and settle as fathers of families. If the Swiss character be 
mercenary, and devoid of feeling for higher influences or motives 
than pay, the taint comes from this source. Yet it is surprising, 
and suggestive of very important reflections, how an enlightened 
self-interest, keenly appreciating its own private advantage in 
the public good, keeps a people honest, sober, industrious, highly 
patriotic, and in the active and regular discharge of all private 
and public duties as men and citizens, without the higher influ- 
ences of religion. But so it is. The Swiss people present to 
the political philosopher the unexpected and most remarkable 
social phenomenon of a people eminently moral in conduct, yet 
eminently irreligious ; at the head of the moral state in Europe, 
not merely for absence of numerous or great crimes, or of dis- 
regard of right, but for ready obedience to law, for honesty, 
fidelity to their engagements, for fair dealing, sobriety, industry, 
orderly conduct, for good government, useful public institutions, 
general well-being, and comfort — yet at the bottom of the scale 
for religious feelings, observances, or knowledge, especially in the 
Protestant cantons, in which prosperity, well-being, and morality 
seem to be, as compared to the Catholic cantons, in an inverse 
ratio to the, influence of religion on the people. How is this 
discordance between their religious and their moral and material 
state to be reconciled 1 ? It is so obvious, that every traveller in 
Switzerland is struck with the great contrast in the well-being 
and material condition of the Protestant and Catholic popula- 
tions, and equally so w r ith the difference in the influence of 
religion over each. * This influence is at its minimum in Pro- 
testant, and at its maximum nearly in Catholic Switzerland; 
and the prosperity and social well-being of the people are exactly 
the reverse. How is tins'? Is it that the Swiss people, at 
home and abroad, see the utility of moral conduct, the utility 
of temperance, fidelity, self-restraint, honesty, obedience to law, 
patriotism, and defence of their country, and of their independent 



CHURCH OF GENEVA. 147 

political establishments, see the advantages, the pay, in short, 
of moral conduct and patriotism, in every shape and way, and 
are therefore eminently moral and patriotic, yet not from re- 
ligious principles or influences, but altogether from an enlight- 
ened self-interest? It is a very remarkable social state, similar, 
perhaps, to that of the ancient Romans, in which morality and 
social virtue were also sustained without the aid of religious 
influences. 

I happened to be at Geneva one Sunday morning as the bells 
were tolling to church. The very sounds which once called the 
powerful minds of a Calvin, a Knox, a Zwingli, to religious exer- 
cise and meditation, were now summoning the descendants of their 
contemporaries to the same house of prayer. There are few 
Scotchmen whose hearts would not respond to such a call. I 
hastened to the ancient cathedral, the church of Saint Peter, to 
see the pulpit from which Calvin had preached, to sit possibly 
in the very seat from which John Knox had listened, to hear the 
pure doctrines of Christianity from the preachers who now stand 
where once the great champions of the Reformation stood; to 
mark, too, the order and observances of the Calvinistic service 
here in its native church ; to revive, too, in my mind, Scotland 
and the picturesque Sabbath days of Scotland in a foreign land. 
But where is the stream of citizens' families in the streets, so re- 
markable a feature in every Scotch town when the bells are tolling 
to church, family after family, all so decent and respectable in 
their Sunday clothes, the fathers and mothers leading the younger 
children, and all walking silently churchwards? and where the 
quiet, the repose, the stillness, of the Sabbath morning, so re- 
markable in every Scotch town and house 1 Geneva, the seat and 
centre of Calvinism, the fountain-head from which the pure and 
living waters of our Scottish Zion flow, the earthly source, the 
pattern, the Rome of our Presbyterian doctrine and practice, has 
fallen lower from her own original doctrine and practice than 
ever Rome fell. Rome has still superstition : Geneva has not 
even that semblance of religion. In the head church of the 
original seat of Calvinism, in a city of five-and-twenty thousand 
souls, at the only service on the Sabbath day — there being no 
evening service — I sat down in a congregation of about two hun- 
dred females, and three-and-twenty males, mostly elderly men 
of a former generation, with scarcely a youth, or boy, or work- 
ing man among them. A meagre liturgy, or printed form of 
prayer, a sermon, which, as far as religion was concerned, might 



148 CHURCH OF GENEVA. 

have figured the evening before at a meeting of some geological 
society, as an u ingenious essay" on the Mosaic chronology, a 
couple of psalm tunes on the organ, and a waltz to go out with, 
were the church service. In the afternoon the only service in 
towns or in the country is = reading a chapter of the Bible to 
the children, and hearing them gabble over the Catechism in 
a way which shows they have not a glimpse of the meaning. A 
pleasure tour in the steam-boats, which are regularly advertised 
for a Sunday promenade round the lake, a picknic dinner in the 
country, and overflowing congregations in the evening at the 
theatre, the equestrian circus, the concert saloons, ball rooms, 
and coffee houses, are all that distinguish Sunday from Monday 
in that city in which, three centuries before, Calvin moved the 
senate and the people to commit to the flames his own early friend, 
Servetus, the discoverer of the circulation of the blood, and one 
of the first philosophers of that age, for presuming to differ in 
opinion and strength of argument from his own religious dogma. 
This is action and re-action in religious spirit, with a vengeance. 
In the village churches along the Protestant side of the Lake of 
Geneva — spots upon this earth specially intended, the traveller 
would say, to elevate the mind of man to his Creator by the 
glories of the surrounding scenery — the rattling of the billiard 
balls, the rumbling of the skittle trough, the shout, the laugh, the 
distant shots of the rifle-gun clubs, are heard above the psalm, the 
sermon, and the barren forms of state- prescribed prayer, during 
the one brief service on Sundays, delivered to very scanty con- 
gregations, in fact, to a few females and a dozen or two old men, 
in very populous parishes supplied with able and zealous min- 
isters. 

What may be the causes of this remarkable difference in the 
working of Calvinism in Switzerland and Scotland '? The churches 
of Geneva and Scotland set out together on their Christian 
pilgrimage, in the days of Calvin and Knox, with the same pro- 
fession of faith, the same doctrines, and the same forms in con- 
gregational worship. We, the vulgar of the kirk of Scotland, 
have at least always been taught to consider the church of Geneva 
as the mother-church of our Presbyterian faith and established 
church usages — the model by which both our doctrines and prac- 
tices were framed and adjusted into their present shape. How 
widely the two have wandered from each other ! . The member of 
the Scotch kirk comes out of the church of Geneva inquiring if 
it be a Calvinistic or Lutheran service he has been attending — 



CHURCH OF GENEVA. J 4.9 

the liturgy, or printed prescribed form of prayer, is there, the 
organ is there, and the sermon is a neat little moral essay that 
might do for either, or for any congregation. Scotland is at this 
day the most religions Protestant country in Europe; and in no 
country in Europe, Protestant or Catholic, is the church attendance 
worse, the regard for the ordinary observances of religious worship 
less, the religious indifference — not entitled to be called infidelity, 
not so respectable as infidelity, because not arising from any reason- 
ing or thinking, wrong or right, about religion — greater than in 
Protestant Switzerland, in the district of our Calvinistic mother- 
church in and about Geneva. Whence is this remarkable differ- 
ence? The starting point of the human mind was the same in both 
countries, at the same period, and under the same leaders — Calvin 
and Knox; and the present divergence of the human mind in its 
religious direction in Switzerland and Scotland is as striking as 
was the original coincidence. 

The only obvious cause of this divergence is, that the state and 
church in Switzerland have from the first engrafted on Calvinism 
a bastard Lutheranism. It is characteristic of Calvinism, as 
received in Scotland, that it is the only branch of Christianity 
which flourishes independently of all church establishments, state 
assistance, or government arrangements, and requires no union 
of church and state. Spiritual, and unconnected with forms, it 
is injured by government interference and regulation. In Scot- 
land itself religion is more flourishing in the Secession than in 
the Established Church, simply because the former is a voluntary, 
the latter a state church. The doctrine and church observances 
and education of the ministers are the same in both. The state 
has — and Calvin himself, in conjunction with the state, to prevent 
probably the excitement of the public mind by the extemporary 
prayers of fanatic preachers adapting their effusions to the pass- 
ing feelings of their congregations, or to keep them exclusively 
Calvinists, and out of the hearing, as far as possible, of other im- 
pressions — prescribed a set form of printed prayer, a liturgy, in 
settling the church discipline and usages of the church of Geneva. 
The Scotch Calvinistic church, about sixty years after the Refor- 
mation, repudiated such interference, even from the church power, 
with individual freedom' of thought and expression in prayer, as 
being contrary to the genuine spirit of Calvinism. The Scotch 
were more Calvinistic than Calvin himself. Time has proved 
that the Scotch kirk was right. In Switzerland, in attempting 
to guard the people by prescribed forms, against the diseases 



150 CHURCH OF GENEVA. 

of fanaticism and erroneous doctrine, the state and Calvinistic 
church have inoculated the people with the worse disease of 
indifference. It is the same experiment, for the same object and 
with the same results, which Prussia is trying in our times with 
the Protestant religion in Germany — to make it a subservient 
machine to state or church policy, to hold the minds of men 
enslaved to a civil or clerical system of government by religious 
ties. 

The Lutheran and Church of England clergy, it may be said, 
are also confined to prescribed printed forms of prayer — true; 
but in the old Lutheran and Anglican churches these forms of 
ceremonial prayer — selected, translated and improved from the 
more ancient popish service — are, as in the Roman Catholic 
church, the sum and substance of the religious service. The 
sermon is only an adjunct of secondary importance in the ser- 
vice of the day. But in the Calvinistic church, as we conceive 
of it in Scotland; the substance of the service is in the sermon ; 
and the best sermon loses half its effect, the best preacher half 
his power, if applicable, appropriate prayer, composed under the 
same impressions and feelings as the discourse, be superseded by set 
forms issued by the state, and which in Switzerland, not having the 
venerated antiquity, the admirable eloquence, and the application 
to every condition and every mind, of the fine ancient liturgy of 
the English church, nor being interwoven with the very existence 
of the church, as in the old Lutheranism, are listened to rather as 
proclamations to heaven of the church and state, than as prayers. 
The influence of the preacher is impaired. He stands in the 
pulpit in a false position as a free Calvinistic minister, with this 
dead weight of a leaden, meagre liturgy round his neck. He is 
not in the position of the Church of England or old Lutheran 
clergyman, who in the delivery of his prescribed liturgy is per- 
forming the most important part of his pastoral duty, and one 
consistent, not discordant, with the principle and spirit of his 
partly ceremonial church, in which the pastor's individual labour 
as a preacher is but secondary and subsidiary. This false posi- 
tion in their own pulpits necessarily lowers the moral and reli- 
gious tone and energy of the clerical character in the Swiss 
clergy. Their liturgy, too, is in itself a meagre, unimpressive 
composition. They attempt to remedy their false position in 
the pulpit, by introducing occasional prayer in the middle, 
and as part of the sermon itself. This smuggled prayer is, in 
itseli) of very impressive effect in pulpit oratory. It is rarely 



CHURCH OF GENEVA. 151 

used by our Scotcli preachers; but here it is so common, that the 
peasants, who sit with their hats on during the sermon, are on 
the watch when the preacher is sliding, from addressing them, 
into prayer, to take off their hats until he returns to the thread 
of his discourse. This practice shows, I conceive, that the min- 
isters feel themselves in a false and inconsistent position, in being 
only allowed to exercise half their duty — that of addressing their 
congregations — not the more important half — that of addressing 
their Creator in prayer — according to their own feelings, impres- 
sions, and powers. This position also gives the pastor too much 
the character with the people of a functionary of the state and 
church, who has his routine duty to do, and is paid for doing it 
like other functionaries. The routine duty of reading their short 
meagre liturgy is too brief to be a regular impressive church 
service, and yet it prevents any other mode of prayer. 

The usual form of church duty in the Calvinistic parishes is 
this: the minister first reads a short prayer, the people standing, 
then gives out two verses of a psalm, which are well performed, 
there being an organ generally even in country churches, and all 
the psalm-books having the notes of the music printed with the 
psalms— and the common people understand music enough to 
use the notes. The text is read while the people are still stand- 
ing, and they then sit down, and old men and peasants generally 
put on their hats while the minister delivers his sermon. The 
sermons are always read from papers; but some of the young 
clergy use the papers very little, and seem to have them merely 
as notes to refresh the memory. The printed forms of prayer 
are then read. They have at least the merit of being very short. 
None of the congregation have them in their hands. They are 
not used like the English prayer-book, by the congregation as 
well as by the minister, but only by the minister. A couple of 
verses of a psalm concludes the service, which, with a brisk tune 
on the organ — the fashionable opera air of the day — to go out of 
church with, occupies about three quarters of an hour. This is all 
the church service on Sundays. The afternoon service is a meeting 
of the children, who, after a prayer (a printed form) and a psalm 
without the organ, are examined in the Catechism. Baptisms, 
churchings, and such duties, are performed; but there is no sermon, 
and no congregation, either in town or country, in the afternoon, 
unless it be on some special occasion, such as a charity sermon. 

This supine state of the Protestant church in Switzerland is 
owing greatly to the effects, indirect and direct, of the last war. 



152 



CHUKCH OF GENEVA. 



The indirect effects were those on the minds of the people bred 
up in the very centre of military movement, amidst excitement, 
bustle, and employments, which left little time or inclination for 
any religious education. The grown generation, and perhaps 
their progeny, show that little value had been put upon religious 
observances, habits, or instruction, in the days of their youth. 
The direct effects were, that, during the war, youth of talent 
and good education found in other professions a more congenial 
and better recompensed career than in the church. It was aban- 
doned to those who had no ambition or talent for any other 
profession; and the standard both of learning and abilities in 
the clerical profession fell during the war below the standard 
of other professions. It is not to be denied that something of 
the same kind took place in Scotland, also, during the last war. 
The church did not obtain her fair proportion of the high- 
minded, high-gifted, and high-educated youth of the country, to 
fill her ranks ; and she is now under the paroxysm of a strong 
reaction, is filled with ambition, and an active spirit too great for 
the narrow circle of her social influence, in a country of widely 
spread dissent, of habits of independent thinking, and of general 
education and intellectual culture not inferior to the standard 
of the clergy themselves. The agitation of late in the Scotch 
church is perhaps owing to this false position of the clergy with 
the people. The moral influence of great superiority of educa- 
tion, and of acquirements unattainable by the multitude, is 
wanting to the Scotch churchman, from the low standard of edu- 
cation which country presbyteries required in licensing preachers. 
As a sacred class of men, the Calvinist admits no superiority 
or influence to the licensed or ordained clerical preacher, more 
than to any lay or other preacher, either in the theory or prac- 
tice of religion. It is to the gifts, talents, intellectual acquire- 
ments, not to the empty ordination ceremony, or clerical 
function, that social influence is given. But the established 
clergy in Scotland have no superiority in these over the clergy 
of the Secession, and neither have any over the youth of the 
middle classes, who study for the lower branches of the legal or 
medical professions, or for filling up their leisure hours in com- 
mercial, manufacturing, or other ordinary vocations of life. They 
are not fenced in, as in the English church, by expensive forms 
of education dividing the clerical class from other men, however 
well educated; nor by essential forms, as in the same ceremonial 
church of England, which none but the regularly ordained clergy- 



CHURCH OF GEXEVA. 153 

man can legally, or in public opinion, perform in a religions 
sense; nor as in England, by the ignorance of the rest<of society, 
from whose want of education the clergyman, however poorly edu- 
cated himself, derives a certain social influence. They have in 
Scotland neither more knowledge, nor of a higher kind, than the 
people they have to instruct. They have no status in public 
opinion simply from being ordained, and unfortunately are strug- 
gling for influence and power as a clerical body co-ordinate 
with the civil power in the state, without laying the foundation 
— superiority of attainments and education — on which alone 
clerical power or social influence can rest in an educated coun- 
try. 

The young men of the Swiss church stand higher, compared 
to the people, in education, than those of the Scotch. They 
are elected by the people from a leet sent from government. 
The leet is made up by the consistory from the roll of licensed 
candidates, according to their standing or seniority. ■•■- The can- 
didates are first suffragans or assistants to parish ministers. They 
are all paid by the state, and are, undoubtedly, in the present 
generation, well educated, pious men. A reaction has taken 
place in the Swiss as in the Scotch church, and in both, the 
young clergy, not the old, lead the movement. ■ But in Switzer- 
land the movement seems confined to a very small circle, chiefly 
of females, around the pastor. The men appear not to enter 
into that circle. The taint in the flock is too deeply seated in 
the constitution of the Swiss church, and in the social state of 
the people, to be cured by their clergy in one generation. 

The late insurrection in the canton of Zurich, in 1839, in 
which the peasantry, headed by some of the clergy, overturned, 
not without bloodshed, the local government, for having ap- 
pointed Dr. Strauss to the chair of theology, may appear altoge- 
ther at variance* with this low estimate of the Swiss religious 
character. I was in Switzerland at the time; and from all I 
could learn, I considered it political not religious, and confirming 
the opinion of the low religious state of the country. Dr. David 
Frederic Strauss published, in 1835, his life of Jesus — Das 
Leben Jesu * — avowedly with the object of overturning all 

* Dr. Strauss's Leben Jesu was admitted into Prussia by the college of 
censorship, in consequence of a minute of Professor Neander, one of the 
censors, and one of the most eminent divines in Prussia, which stated, 
1 ' that if the interpretation of the original history of Christianity laid down in 
Dr. Strauss's work were to be generally received, Christianity, as at present 



154 CmJRCH OF GENEVA. 

belief in those events of, or connected with, our Saviour's history, 
which cannot be reconciled to, or explained by, the ordinary 
course of natural operation. He brings to this attack upon 
Christianity and the miracles, not the wit, ingenuity, or philosophy 
of a Voltaire, a Hume, or a Gibbon, but a mass of learning 
and biblical criticism, which, his admirers say, the church is 
unable to match. The weight of profound scholarship and 
philosophical criticism is, it seems, all on the side of infidelity; 
and the most able and learned of the German theologians — no 
superficial scholars in biblical lore — have, it appears, been 
worsted in the opinion of the learned by this Goliath. In the 
wantoness of power the authorities of Zurich chose to call Dr. 
Strauss to the vacant theological chair in their university — to 
appoint a learned man, who denies and controverts the very facts 
and foundations of all Christianity, to teach theology to those 
who are to instruct the people in the Christian faith. This 
attempt on the part of a government shows sufficiently the 
state of religion in the country. It was defeated, not from any 
new-born religious zeal of the people, but because the misgovern- 
nient and perversion of the powers entrusted by the community 
to their rulers, in this absurd appointment, were apparent; and 
the ministers found no want of followers, from the roused 
common sense of the people, even among those who perhaps had 
not crossed the church door for six months, to go to Zurich and 
displace magistrates who had abused their delegated powers so 
obviously. So little of religious zeal entered into this movement, 
that Dr. Strauss, as he had received the appointment, was 
allowed the retiring pension of a professor. The people appointed 
new members, without changing the forms of their government, 
retired to their mountains and valleys, and this revival was at 
an end. The present commotions in Argau, also, appear to be 

understood, would certainly be at an end. The work, however,- is written 
with such philosophical earnestness and science, that a prohibition of it by 
the state would be unsuitable, because it can only be overcome in the fields 
■of learning and philosophic science ; and it is, moreover, a work which 
can scarcely penetrate beyond the circle of the learned." Such a character 
of Dr. Strauss's work, from a scholar and divine of such eminence in 
biblical literature, places it beyond the contempt of ordinary theologians, 
who may affect to sneer at what they cannot even read. Why do not our 
young clergy withdraw from their political economy, • and their non-in- 
trusion, or intrusion politics, and refute the errors in philosophical criticism 
arid in biblical learning of this antagonist, who, at the age of five-and-twenty, 
or thirty, has thrown down the gauntlet to the divines of Europe? 



SWISS SCENERY. 155 

entirely a struggle between Protestants and Catholics for property 
and political power. 

The snowy peak, the waterfall, the glacier, are but the wonders 
of Switzerland; her beauty is in her lakes — the blue eyes of 
this Alpine land. The most beautiful passage of scenery in 
Switzerland is, to my mind, the upper end of the Lake of Geneva, 
from Vevay, or from Lausaane to Yilleneuf. Scenery more 
sublime may be found on the lakes of Lucerne, Zug, Brientz; 
but in the pure, unmixed sublime of natural scenery there is a 
gloom, essential perhaps to it, which cannot long be sustained 
without a weariness of mind. Here the gay expanse of water 
is enlivening; and the water here is in due proportion to the 
landward part of the scenery — not too little, nor too much, for 
the mountains. The climate, too, under the shelter of the high 
land, the vegetations of various climes upon the hill -side before 
the eye at once, have a charm for the mind. The margin of the 
lake is carved out, and built up into terrace above terrace of 
vineyards and Indian-corn plots ; behind this narrow belt, grain 
crops, orchards, grass fields, and chestnut-trees have their zone; 
higher still upon the hill -side, pasture grass and forest-trees 
occupy the ground; above rises a dense mass of pine forest, 
broken by peaks of bare rocks shooting up, weather-worn and 
white, through this dark green mantle; and, last of all, the 
eternal snow piled high up against the deep blue sky — and all 
this glory of nature, this varied majesty of mountain-land, 
within one eye-glance! lb is not surprising that this vrafcer of 
Geneva has seen upon its banks the most powerful minds of 
each succeeding generation. Calvin, Knox, Voltaire, Gibbon, 
Rousseau, Madame de St&el, Lord Byron, John Kemble, have, 
with all their essential diversities and degrees of intellectual 
powders, been united here in one common feeling of the magni- 
ficence of the scenery around it. This land of alp and lake is 
indeed a mountain-temple reared for the human mind on the 
dull unvaried plains of Europe. Men of every country resort 
to it from an irresistible impulse to feel intensely, at least once 
in their lives, the majesty of nature. The purest of intellectual 
enjoyments that the material world can give is being alone in 
the midst of this scenery. 



156 SYSTTZEfiLAND. 



CHAPTER X. 

NOTES ON SWITZERLAND. MONTREUX. — CHECKS V>N OYES-POrULATION. — SWISS 

DAIRY. AGRICULTURE.. SOCIAL CONDITION. 

It is of the people of the countries T visit, not of the scenery, — 
of political and social economy, not of rocks and wilds, forests and 
floods, that I would speak, even in Switzerland. During two 
successive summers of late years, I fixed myself in the parish of 
Montreux, on the side of the Lake of Geneva, not far from the 
castle of Chilon. The locality is celebrated in every note book, 
delineated in every sketch-book of every sentimental tourist from 
the days cf our grandmothers — for before Byron sung, and when 
Chilon was nothing more than it now is — an old French-like 
chateau, very suitable for its present use — a military magazine 
— the locality was the region of sentimentality, and hot-house 
feeling ; for here Rousseau had placed his Julie, and St. Preux ; 
and Clartns, and Meillarie, and all that is real or unreal in the 
Heloise — are here or hereabouts. But the locality has its own 
claims on the political economist as well as on the romantic 
tourist. We, the inhabitants of the parish of Montreux, are of 
unspeakable interest in the speculations of the enlightened 
prosers on political economy in the winter evening re-unions of 
Geneva and Lausanne. They demonstrate from our sage exam- 
ple, to a simpering circle of wives and daughters-in-law, the 
wisdom, duty, possibility, and utility, of keeping the numbers of 
a community, be it a nation, parish, or family, in due Malthusian 
ratio to the means of living. We of this parish have the 
honour of being cited in print to all Europe — besides the cities 
of Geneva and Lausanne — as an edifying example of sag esse on 
the great scale, as a perfect and remarkable instance of the 
application of moral restraint by a whole population upon their 
own over-multiplication. It appears from the register of this 
our parish of Montreux that the proportion of births to the 
population is 1 to 46, while in the rest of Switzerland it is 
reckoned 1 to 27 or 28 inhabitants. In England the proportion 
is 1 in 28; in France, 1 in 32 or 33; in Prussia, 1 in 25; in 
Bohemia, 1 in 24; in the old Venetian states, 1 in 22; in 



: 



MONTBEUX L57 

Russia, 1 in 18 or 19. This remarkably small proportion of 
births to the population in our parish, is ascribed to the late 
period of life to which the peasants put off their marriages. 

Sir Francis d'lvernois published, in 1837, a pamphlet, " En- 
quete sur les Causes patentes ou occultes de la faible Proportion 
des Kaissances a Montreux," in which, with some ill-supported 
conclusions, he makes many valuable observations. The strength 
of nations, their wealth as regards population, depends, he justly 
observes, not on the number of births, but of persons born who 
attain a useful age. The true and valuable increase of the popu- 
lation of a country depends, in short, upon the principle of mak- 
ing as many men as possible out of as few children as possible. 
If one-half of the children born, die before they attain a useful 
age, the rearing them has been a national loss, not a national 
gain. The population of effective people in Russia, with 1 
birth to every 1 8 or 1 9 persons, may not be advancing so rapidly 
as that of France with 1 birth only to 33 persons. The obser- 
vation is applicable to the supposed rapid increase of the popu- 
lation of the United States : more die before reaching the age 
of utility, and the rearing them is a loss, in reality, to the coun- 
try, by the time, labour, and expense of their food and rearing, 
if they die before that age. In this parish, in w^hich 1 birth 
is the average to 46 people, 1 death is the mortality to 75. In 
Switzerland, in general, 1 in 42 is reckoned the average mor- 
tality. In the canton Thurgovia, in eighteen years before 1824, 
the births were 1 in 27, and the deaths 1 in 31 : so that in 
reality its population w^as increasing in a slow r er ratio than that 
of this parish with its births 1 in 46, and its deaths 1 in 75. 
There, one-half of the infants die before their fifth year. Here, 
nineteen out of twenty reach the first year of life, and very 
nearly four-fifths of those w T hom the present venerable minister 
has baptised, have lived to receive the sacrament from his hands. 
This diminished mortality Sir Francis ascribes to the postpone- 
ment of the age of marriage, by w^hich a healthier child is 
produced than in precocious marriages, and the child is better 
nursed. The postponement of the marriages to a later age, 
and also the fewer births in families, Sir Francis ascribes to a 
moral restraint acted upon by the population of this parish, both 
before marriage, and also after they have entered into the marriage 
state — a restraint, it seems, which their untutored good sense 
leads them to exert, and entirely conformable to the moral re- 
straint inculcated by Malthus and Dr. Chalmers. This moral 



158 CHECKS OX OVER-POPULATION 

restraint, as an effective check upon tlie tendency to over-mul- 
tiplication, is, in reality, mere delusion. Moral restraint is an 
expression ill-defined. The propagation of the species by mar- 
riage is not immoral in itself. It may be imprudent for a man 
to marry, and have a family of children whom he cannot support; 
but it is confounding the landmarks of morality and prudence 
to say that marriage is moral in Canada, and immoral in Kent; 
or should be placed under moral restraint when a man's banker's 
book, or his employer's tally book is against him, but is a moral 
and laudable transaction if the balance be on the right side of 
the page. It is a delusion, or even worse in character than mere 
delusion, to conjure up false feelings of moral restraint, and erect 
a false moral standard in the human mind against acts, which, 
however imprudent, are not immoral, and in all times, and under 
all circumstances, unchangeably immoral. The immorality which 
it is proposed by these political economists to put under moral 
restraint, is the imprudence of marrying without means to main- 
tain a family. This imprudence is founded upon the poverty 
of the parties. This poverty again is founded upon what] Upon 
their moral delinquency? no, but upon the state to which they 
were born; but this is no moral guilt — it is the effect of an evil 
construction of society, of a wrong distribution of property in it, 
by which a numerous class succeed to no property whatsoever. 
It is rather too much for our political economists to enlist moral 
restraint into the defence of the fictitious feudal construction of 
society. This parish of Montreux proves the very reverse of the con- 
clusions of Sir Francis d'lvernois, as to the use of this false moral 
restraint on improvident marriage. It shows that economical 
restraint is sufficient. Our parish is divided into three communes 
or administrations. In that in which I am lodged, Veytaux, 
there is not a single pauper, although there is an accumulated 
poor fund, and the village thinks itself sufficiently important to 
have its post-office, its fire engine, its watchman ; and it has a 
landward population around. The reason is obvious without 
having recourse to any occult moral restraint, or any tradition 
of the evils of over- population from the fate of the ancient Helve- 
tians, as Sir Francis absurdly supposes possible, whose emigration 
from over-population Julius Caesar repressed with the sword. 
The parish is one of the best cultivated and most productive 
vineyards in Europe; and is divided in very small portions 
among a great body of small proprietors. What is too high up 
the hill for vines, is in orchard; hay, and pasture land. There 



CHECKS ON OVEB-P0PULATION". 159 

is no manufacture, and no chance work going on in the parish. 
These small proprietors, with their sons and daughters, work on 
their own land, know exactly what it produces, what it cost3 
them to live, and whether the land can support two families or 
not. Their standard of living is high, as they are proprietors. 
They are well lodged, their houses well furnished, and they live 
well, although they are working men. I lived with one of them 
two summers successively. This class of the inhabitants would 
no more think of marrying, without means to live in a decent 
way, than any gentleman's sons or daughters in England; and 
indeed less, because there is no variety of mems of living, as in 
England. It must be altogether out of the land. The class 
below them again, the mere labourers, or village tradesmen, are 
under a similar economical restraint, which it is an abuse of words 
and principles to call moral restraint. The quantity of work 
which each of the small proprietors must hire, is a known and 
filled up demand, not very variable. There is no corn farming, 
little or no horse work, and the number of labourers and trades- 
men who can live by the work and custom of the other class, is 
as fixed and known as the means of living of the landowners 
themselves. There is no chance living — no room for an addi- 
tional house even, for this class, because the land is too valuable, 
and too minutely divided, to be planted with a labourer's house, 
if his labour be not necessary. All that is wanted is supplied ; 
and until a vacancy naturally opens, in which a labourer and 
his wife could find work and house room, he cannot marry. 
The economical restraint is thus quite as strong among the la- 
bourers, as among the class of proprietors. Their standard of 
living, also, is necessarily raised by living and working all day 
along with a higher class. They are clad as well, females and 
males, as the peasant proprietors. The costume of the canton 
is used by all. This very parish might be cited as an instance 
of the restraining powers of property, and of the habits, tastes, 
and standard of living, wdiich attend a wide diffusion of property 
among a people, on their own over-multiplication. It is a proof 
that a division of property by a law of succession different in 
principle from the feudal, is the true check upon over popu- 
lation. 

The speculations of political economists on this subject are, 
with us, confined to philosophical discussion; but on the Con- 
tinent- — in Switzerland and in Germany — they have been adopted 
as a basis of practical and altogether monstrous legislation. The 



160 CHECKS OX OVER-POPULATION. 

Thirrgovians, taking the alarm at the facts, that in 18 years 
preceding 1824, the proportion of births among them had been 
1 in 27 of the people, and of deaths 1 in 31, and that in another 
canton, that of Tecino, of 77,000 people, 2,932 were new-born, 
a vast proportion of whom died within the first year, proposed, 
— that is, the administrators of their poor rates proposed — to 
their legislative body, that the marriages of the poor who were 
unable to pay the quota to the poor tax should be prohibited. 
The first article of their proposed law prohibits the marriage of 
males who live by public charity; the second requires that, to 
obtain permission to marry, a certificate from the overseers of the 
poor must be produced, of the industry, and love of labour, and 
of the good conduct of the parties, and that, besides clothes, they 
art worth 700 francs French, or about £30 sterling. The third 
article of this extraordinary law in a free state, makes the mar- 
riage admissible without the proof of this 700 francs of value 
in moveable property, if the parties have furniture free of debt, 
and pay the poor tax of 1 per mille upon fixed property. Their 
legislative body had sense enough to reject this absurd proposi- 
tion in 1833. The canton of St. Gall, however, actually has im- 
posed a tax on marriages ; and to make it popular, the amount 
goes to the poor fund. It fails, because according to Sir Francis 
d'lvernois, it is too low, being 46 francs, about 71 francs French, 
or about £3 sterling; and because it is not graduated according to 
the ages of the parties, so as to prevent early marriages. But he 
thinks the principle excellent, as both Eicardo and Say, it seems, 
recommend the postponement of the marriageable age of the poor 
as an object of legislative enactment. — but not of the rich. Pro- 
fessor "Weinhold, who proposed, in 1836, the infibulation of both 
sexes in Prussia, to prevent the increase of population, was a sage 
and wise legislator compared to these great political economists, 
for his operation would have been at least equal for all classes; 
and not a law affecting one class only. In Germany, commis- 
sa.ries have actually been appointed by some governments (Bavaria 
among others) who are invested with the power to refuse per- 
mission to marry to those whom they judge not able to support 
a family. They have a veto on marriages. All this monstrous, 
and demoralising, and tyrannical interference with the most sacred 
of those private rights for which man enters into social union 
with man, is the consequence of the absurd speculations of our 
English political economists and their foreign proselytes, who see 
clearly enough the evil, but who do not see, or are afraid to state, 



CHECKS ON OVER-POPULATION. 161 

that the remedy is not in a false code of morality, imposing moral 
restraiat upon an act not immoral, — the marriage of the sexes ; 
nor in a false code of laws for preventing the most powerful 
stimulus of nature; bat in raising the civilisation, habits, mode 
of living, and prudence of the lower classes of the community by 
a wider diffusion of property among them, by an inoculation of 
the whole mass of society with the restraints which property 
carries with it upon imprudence and want of forethought in human 
action. The object of the laws which these political economists 
propose to themselves, is the postponement, of marriages among 
the lowest class, to 26 or 30 years of age, when, it is assumed, 
healthier children will be procreated. Of 214 marriages in this 
parish, the average age of the males was found to be 30, and of 
the females 26^- years. But it is by no means an ascertained 
fact in physics, that the progeny of parents advanced far beyond 
puberty, are more healthy than of parents who have just reached 
the age of puberty. Our breeders of cattle, sheep, horses, and 
dogs of valuable races, seem, on the contrary, to find improvement 
instead of deterioration from putting them together at earlier 
ages than formerly. Our nobility and gentry in England marry 
at much earlier ages than our lower classes; and they are 
certainly finer animals than these or almost any other of the 
human species. Other causes than the age of the parents form 
the constitution of animals; and to legislate upon a fact so im- 
perfectly ascertained, is sufficiently absurd. The ages of 30 and 
26 years are probably the average of the greater proportion of 
marriages among our own lower and middle classes at present 
in Britain. On the Continent, most of the civil codes iix the 
age of puberty for females at 16, and for males at 18 years, and 
probably marriages do take place at an earlier age abroad than 
with us. Sir Francis d'lvernois states that at Prrelognan, in the 
States of Sardinia, in which a premium and even a pension is 
paid to fathers of families who have above 12 children, upon 
the old exploded idea that the numbers of the population form the 
strength of the state, the young men had voluntarily entered 
into a secret association, binding themselves not to marry before 
28 years of age, in consequence of the misery they saw produced 
in their valley by over-population. They show intelligence in 
this resolution ; but no such association would be necessary in 
any community in which property was attainable by industry; 
for in few situations, can or does the labouring man, if he is in 
the way of earning any thing by his labour, think of marrying 

31 



162 CHECKS ON OVER-POPULATION. 

at an earlier age than 28 or 30. It is only in Ireland, or in 
Sardinia, that the peasant sees no prospect of being better off at 
28 or 30 years of age, than at 18; and therefore, very naturally, 
and very properly, marries at 18 or very early in life, so as to 
have a prospect of children grown np, before he is past the age 
to work for them; and who will be able to work for themselves, 
and perhaps for him when he is worn out. It is also by no 
means an ascertained fact, that a woman marrying at 26 and a 
man at 30 years of age, will not have as large a family, as 
marrying at 18 and 20 years of age; and it is clear that their 
children will not be so soon ready to help them. In Russia, 
the Emperor Nicholas fixed by an ukase, in 1830, the marriage- 
able ages at 16 for females, and 18 for men; but this is stated 
by Sir Francis to arise from a circumstance which will scarcely 
be credited in civilised countries. The value of estates in Russia 
is reckoned according to the number of serfs; and the landed 
proprietors raise or force a population on their estates. And 
how ? As the male does not arrive at puberty so early as the 
female in the human species, the infant husband's marriage bed 
is filled by his father, until he comes to puberty ! — So says Sir 
Francis. But this barbarous practice for augmenting the number 
of serfs upon an estate is scarcely credible ; and can scarcely be 
general, if it ever did exist. It is more reasonable to suppose, 
that marriages below the ages fixed by the ukase took place to 
avoid the military service, as fathers of families would of course 
not be so liable to conscription as unmarried men; and there- 
fore the military age must be attained before a man can legally 
marry. 

Political economists have unfortunately used in their specula- 
tions the ambiguous term of moral restraint. Malthus evidently 
used it originally, as contra-distinctive merely to the terms legal 
restraint or physical restraint ; but not as restraint founded on 
moral principle, on the moral innate sense of right or wrong. 
Prudential restraint, or economical restraint, would, perhaps, 
have expressed his meaning less ambiguously. But his followers, 
and perhaps he himself in some passages, lost sight of the original 
meaning, and followed the ambiguity in the meaning of moral, 
so as to set up a new moral delinquency, repugnant to the innate 
sentiments of right and wrong in the human breast. Men heard 
with indignation, marriage, however imprudent and reckless, 
classed with fornication, or theft, as a moral delinquency; and 
the morality or immorality of human action, seriously stated 



CHECKS ON OVER-POPULATION. 163 

even by divines, by Malthus and Dr. Chalmers, to depend upon 
prudential considerations. The rough untutored common sense 
of all men of the lower class rejected this new code of morality; 
and the socialists, and radicals, with reason crow over the ecclesi- 
astics in this argument. They ask for what purpose is this new- 
fashioned moral obligation in the most important of the actions of 
man — his marriage — to be inculcated? Is it to support any natura' 
and necessary system of society? No. But to support an artificial 
feudal division of property, originating in the darkest and most 
barbarous ages, by which one son alone succeeds to the laud, and 
the others, with their posterity, are thrown into that pauper 
class, who must live on the taxes or alms of the rest of the com- 
munity; and must be debarred by legal enactment, or by a false 
tuition of their moral obligations, from the common right of all 
animals, that of propagation by the law of their species, by pair- 
ing or marriage. On the Continent, where speculative ideas are 
pushed to the extreme, the legitimate deduction from this new 
moral restraint has been carried to an extent which may alarm 
our pious moralists who first propounded it. The obligation of 
this moral restraint on the poor is carried into their marriage 
beds. There are some subjects which it is difficult to treat with 
decency of expression. The physician, and also the moralist, 
occasionally meet with cases in which a clear understanding can 
only be attained at the expense of modesty. What is meant by 
this kind of moral restraint in marriage? The prefet of the De- 
partment de la Somme, Monsieur Dunoyer, in transmitting to 
the communes of his department the money allotted for the 
maintenance of their paupers, publishes the following circular 
letter : " There are not two ways of escaping indigence. Families 
in indigence can only extricate themselves by activity, good sense, 
prudence, and economy— prudence especially, in the conjugal 
union, in avoiding with an extreme care to render their marriage 
more fruitful than their industry." What is meant by this, 
" evitant avec un soin extreme de rendre leur mariage plus fecond 
que leur Industrie?" Does it mean, this official manifesto of the 
magistrate, which, if not law, comes with the force of an injunc- 
tion from the administrator of the law, does it mean to recommend 
the stifling the fruits of marriage after birth? or before birth? 
or does it mean some practice which it. is against modesty to 
imagine? It is perhaps impossible to come nearer to the subject 
in decent language : but this " evitant de rendre leur mariage 
fecond," can only mean one or other of these three modes of avoid- 



164 CHECKS ON OVER-POPULATION. 

ing any fruits of marriage ; or it must mean a separation of the 
parties from bed and board after cohabitation, or a rendering 
marriage de facto a temporary cohabitation, a marriage for a few 
months, renewed, or not, according to pecuniary, or convenient, or 
economical circumstances. The Count Yilleneuf de Bargemont, 
a prefet, counsellor of state, and deputy, under Charles X., in his 
"Econoniie Politique Chretienne, 3 vols. 8vo, Paris, 1834," takes 
this latter more innocent meaning, but one as injurious to social 
happiness as that which our political economists are supposed by 
the foreign political economists to have intended to recommend ; 
and, after a profound research into the writings of the fathers of 
the church, finds that " the Christian religion places continence 
between husband and wife, when it is by mutual consent, among 
the highest of virtues.'' In that enlightened age, the eleventh cen- 
tury, more than one instance occurred during the Heptarchy, of 
royal saints who attained canonisation by reaching the summit 
of this highest of virtues, by marrying, bedding, sleeping together, 
and remaining in virginity all their lives. It is somewhat carious 
in the nineteenth century to find a Catholic lawyer imagining 
that two Protestant divines, one of the English church and -one of 
the Scotch, recommend this first of Christian virtues, and charitably 
coming to their assistance and proving by citations, and authorities 
from the fathers, that their doctrine is quite agreeable to Christi- 
anity. The principal difficulty to be got over in the theory of this 
doctrine is, in the simple question, Why marry at all, if people are 
not to live conformably to the married state, and to have families in 
it? or why not marry for a time — for a year or two, a month or two, 
a night or two? The principal difficulty in the practice of this con- 
tinence in marriage among the poorer class, lies exactly in the 
circumstance which its foreign expounders consider as making it 
necessary — in their poverty. Where is the indigent family to find 
two rooms and two beds? or are they to sleep together, husband 
and wife, yet preserve continency? or are they to resort to any 
of the three other means hinted at, of " evitant de rendre leur 
mariage plus fecond que leur industries" Sir Prancis d'lvemois 
suspects that the peasantry of Montreux must practise thisjatter 
precious moral means of preventing their marriages being more 
fruitful than their industry, and puts the question to their ven- 
erable minister. The old gentleman, who is in his ninety-fifth 
year, evidently laughing at the gullibility of the political econo- 
mists of Geneva, refers him to the other side of the lake, the 
Catholic side, for information, as on hi* Protestant side there is 



CHECKS OX OVER-POPULATION. 165 

no confessional through which the priest can become acquainted 
with such secret sins of his parishioners ; and observes, that in 
his youth the political economists from Geneva used to deplore 
the unprolific constitutions of the Yandoise females; and now it 
is become a subject of their congratulation; but, in his opinion, 
hard work, in which, as proprietors working for themselves, they 
persevere, he thinks, even to an excess, exemption from misery, 
there being no destitution or extreme poverty, and exemption 
from great superfluity, or means of indulgence independent of 
work, have much to do with the matter; and have raised among 
his flock a spirit of -prudence, inculcated from generation to 
generation, which postpones marriages until the parties can sup- 
port a family. Sir Francis d'lvernois considers it quite certain 
that in France, the practice of this highest of Christian virtues, 
" the evitant avec un soin extreme de rendre leur mariage plus 
fecond que leur industrie," is extensively diffused ; because the 
proportion of births to the population has, since the Restoration, 
been diminishing regularly; and is now only 1 in 33, or even 
less. Is it not more reasonable to suppose, that the same causes 
which in this parish of Montreux have, in the enlightened opinion 
of the minister, reduced the proportions to 1 in 46, are in 
operation also on a great scale in France? that the possession of 
property has given to the whole population the habits of caution 
and prudence, and the use of gratifications of civilised life, which 
necessarily postpone marriages until a later period of life, and 
until a property is acquired adequate to the higher standard of 
living introduced by this universal diffusion of property? The 
additional, and hitherto unnoticed physical check, pointed out 
by the minister, upon over-population in a country of small landed 
proprietors, must also have had its effect in France, viz., the 
spirit of hard work and of unremitting occupation of mind and 
body about their little properties, which the pastor of Montreux 
thinks is carried even to excess, and which is intimately con- 
nected with two other physical checks — the earlier age at which 
the pastor thinks his female parishioners cease to be prolific, and 
the prolongation of the period of nursing. The fact that France 
is supporting one-third more inhabitants from nearly the same 
extent of arable land, than before the revolution, proves that this 
population must be much more laborious, and give more care and 
incessant work to their land. It is needless to add that idleness 
is a great originator of population, and is altogether propagational 
— and hard or incessant occupation of body and mind, a most 



166 CHECKS ON OVER-POPULATION. 

powerful physical check upon it, and is altogether anti-propaga- 
tional. 

The most profound observation ever made in the science of 
political economy is that of Solomon — "The destruction of the 
poor is their poverty." It is their poverty that causes their over- 
multiplication, and their over-multiplication their poverty. Cure 
their poverty, give them property, inoculate the whole mass of 
1 society with the tastes, habits, and feelings of prudence, which 
attend the possession of property, by abolishing the laws of suc- 
cession which tend to concentrate all property in one upper class, 
and over-multiplication is cured. It is evidently curing itself 
rapidly in France, without the unnatural and immoral restraints 
recommended by political economists to be taught as injunctions 
of religion and morality by their clergy, or to be enforced as law 
by the local authorities. 

Political economists do not enter into the position of the 
poor man under our feudal construction of society. They are 
ignorant of his calculations. They pour out the vials of their 
wrath against him for marrying without having the means of 
supporting a family. But in his position it is the wisest and 
most moral step he can take, lie marries early because he has 
a more reasonable chance of raising his children to an age to 
provide for themselves, if he marries early, than if he postpones 
his marrying until an age when he must be failing in capability 
of work before they can work for themselves. If his family 
have no property, or reasonable prospect of property but from 
their work, the sooner he can produce two or three working 
hands to help in their common subsistence the better. It is 
wisdom in his position to marry at twenty years of age, and 
folly to postpone it to thirty, or thirty-five, or forty, because he will 
be getting past hard work, especially piece-work, in the latter 
case, before his children can earn wages for full work as grown 
up men and women. To tell him to wait until his savings 
enable him to keep his children, is but a mockery. AYages of 
labour in no trade or position of Fife in which the mass of 
labourers exist, admit of any such saving, without the giving 
up of all habits of civilisation. It is out of the wages of labour, 
day by day, that the poor must subsist their families, not by 
any possible accumulation of savings out of their wages. If 
they postponed their marriages for such an accumulation, ac- 
cording to the recommendation of our political economists, they 
would find themselves, betwreen fifty and sixty years of age, 



CHECKS OX OVER-POPULATION*. 107 

when a hard-worked man is sensibly failing, burdened with 
children to support, of an age too young to support themselves. 
The poor act much more wisely in having children grown up, 
and the expense of their infancy and rearing over, before they 
themselves begin to fail. It is here we see the truth of Solomon's 
observation, that " the destruction of the poor is their poverty.'' 
Give them property, as a class, by abrogating the feudal law of 
succession, and all other impediments to the widest diffusion of pro- 
perty through society, and the moral and economical restraints 
arising fiom property and prudential consideration, would 
postpone their marriage age until the period most suitable for 
their interests. The very same prudential consideration hastens 
their marriage age now, in their hopeless, endless state of 
destitution of property. The state of France furnishes a re- 
markable illustration of this principle. In Erance property is 
widely diffused, population is increasing, yet the number of 
births is decreasing. Of those born many more live to be added 
to the population, although the actual births are in proportion 
almost one-third fewer in numbers, than in countries in which 
property is not diffused as in France. Can there be a more 
satisfactory proof of the right working of the great social 
experiment now in progress in France? The number of children 
reared in proportion to those born is the surest test of the 
well-being and good condition with respect to food, lodging, and 
domestic habits of those who rear them — of the people. 

A political economy opposed to the moral and natural economy 
of society is unsound. It rests upon an arbitrary expediency 
only. The speculations upon artificial checks to the increase of 
population by legislative, educational, or conventional restraints, 
inconsistent with the natural rights, moral duties, and social 
relations of the individuals composing the poorer classes, are 
altogether false in principle. The administration of the poor 
law by the commissioners in England — the separation of husband 
and wife — of parents and children — the confinement in work- 
houses of all receiving relief — cannot be justified on any principle 
but expediency; and on that, anything — the veto on marriages 
among the poor — the enormities alluded to by Sir Francis 
d'lvernois — anything and everything in short may be justified. 
The destitute either have a right or have not a right to relief! 
If they have not, it is a robbery to take the sum from the richer 
class to relieve them. If they have, from the nature and 
constitution of property and society, a right inherent in them 



168 SWISS DAIRY. 

as animals to such a portion of the fruits of God's earth as will 
maintain them, it is unjust and tyrannical to withhold that 
portion except on conditions inconsistent with their free agency 
and enjoyment of life as moral intelligent beings. The expedi- 
ency-principle of making the poor rate relief as sour as possible 
to the receiver, in order to lessen the pecuniary burden on the 
giver, would justify the exterminating, or torturing, or mutilat- 
ing the pauper class. This is from first to last a false legislation. 
The expediency itself arises only from false legislation — from 
throwing the whole burden of supporting the poor upon one 
kind of property only, and one class of proprietors; and then 
attempting, by such an administration of the poor rates, to 
alleviate the burden which this exemption of all other kinds of 
property necessarily accumulates to a ruinous extent upon that 
one kind — the land. 

In Switzerland each parish has its Alp, that is, its common 
pasture for the cows of the parish — which is the proper meaning 
of the word Alp — and each inhabitant is entitled to a cow's 
grazing, or half a cow's grazing, from June to October, on this 
common pasture. These grazing rights are highly prized, for 
the Swiss peasant is extravagantly fond of his cow. To pass a 
winter without a cow to care for, would be a heavy life to him. 
Few, however, have cows in sufficient number to repay the 
labour of attending them at the summer grazing in the Alps. The 
properties are too small, in general, to keep more than five or 
six cows all winter: and few can keep more than half that 
number. Yet these small proprietors contrive to send cheeses 
to market as large as our Cheshire dairy-farmers with their 
dairy stocks of forty or fifty cows, and farms rented at £200 or 
.£300 a year. This is a signal instance of the absurdity of the 
dogma in agriculture, so implicitly received by all our political 
economists from books on farming — that small farms are incom- 
patible with good husbandry, or farming operations on a great 
scale. Gruyere and Parmesan cheeses are quite as large as 
Cheshire cheeses; and, as the price shows, are incomparably 
better in quality. They are made by small farmers, each of 
whom has not, on an average, the milk of half a dozen cows to 
make cheese of. Each parish in Switzerland hires a man, 
generally from the district of Gruyere, in the canton of Freyberg, 
to take care of the herd, and make the cheese; and if the man 
comes from Gruyere, all that he makes is called Gruyere cheese, 
although made far enough from Gruyere. One cheeseman, one 



SWISS DAIRY. 169 

pressman or assistant, and one cowherd, are considered necessary 
for every forty cows. The owners of the cows get credit, each 
of them, in a book daily, for the quantity of milk given by each 
cow. The cheeseman and his assistants milk the cows, put the 
milk all together, and make cheese of it, and at the end of the 
season each owner receives the weight of cheese proportionable 
to the quantity of milk his cows have delivered. By this co- 
operative plan, instead of the small-sized, unmarketable cheese 
only, which each could produce out of his three or four cows' milk, 
he has the same weight in large marketable cheese, superior in 
quality, because made by people who attend to no other business. 
The cheeseman and his assistants are paid so much per head of 
the cows, in money or in cheese, or, sometimes, they hire the cows, 
and pay the owners in money or cheese. When we find this, which 
of all operations in husbandly seems most to require one large 
stock, and one large capital applied to it, so easily accomplished 
by the well-understood co-operation of small farmers, it is idle 
to argue that draining, or irrigation, or liming, or fencing, or 
manuring, or any operation whatsoever in farming, to which 
large capital is required, cannot be accomplished also by small 
farmers — not small tenant-farmers, but small proprietor-farmers, 
like the Swiss. In October the cows are brought home, and 
the home grass-lands having been mown for hay twice during 
the summer, the winter food is provided, and a very small area 
of land keeps a cow, when the home grass has not been burdened 
with the summer grazing. The pasture in these Alps, or sum- 
mer grazings, is abundant and rich. In some of the upper 
valleys inhabited winter as well as summer, but in which the 
corn-crops are secondary, and dairy produce the main object — as, 
for instance, Grindewald — a man with a house suitably situated 
is permanently established for receiving the milk of the neigh- 
bourhood. Each family takes care of and milks its own cow or 
cows, keeps the milk wanted for family use, and sends the rest 
of it daily to the cheeseman, who gives each family credit for 
the quantity of milk delivered each day • and the cheese made 
during the season is divided, or very usually the cheese is 
marketed, and the money divided : and in this way cheeses of. 
great weight are manufactured, although no one cow owner has 
milk enough to make one of marketable size. I went one warm 
forenoon, while ascending the Khigi, into one of these dairy 
houses. From the =want of , dairy-maids or females about the 
place, and the appearance of the cow-man and his boys, I 



170 AGRICULTURE OF SWITZERLAND. 

thought it prudent to sit down on the bench outside of the 
smoky dwelling room, and to ask for a bowl of milk there., It 
was brought me in a remarkably clean wooden bowl, and I had 
some curiosity, when, clean or dirty, my milk was swallowed, to 
see where it came from. The man took me to a separate wooden 
building; and instead of the disgusting dirt and sluttishness I 
had expected, I found the most unpretending cleanliness in this 
rough milk room — nothing w r as in it but the wooden vessels 
belonging to the dairy; but these were of unexceptionable 
nicety ; and all those holding the milk were standing in a broad 
rill of w^ater led from the neighbouring burn, and rippling 
through the centre of the room, and prevented by a little side 
sluice from running too full, and mingling with the milk. This 
burn running through gave a freshness and . cleanliness to every 
article; although the whole was of rude construction, and 
evidently for use, not show. The cows were stabled, I found, 
at some distance from the milkhouse, that the effluvia of their 
breath and dung might not taint the milk. ■" Cheese is almost 
the only agricultural product of Switzerland that is exported; 
and it is manufactured by these small farmers certainly as well, 
with as much intelligence, cleanliness, and advantage, as by large 
farmers. Grain the country must import; and the supply is 
principally from the east side of the lake of Constance. Wine 
is not produced in greater quantity than the country consumes. 
The Swiss cows are exported even to Russia, and to all parts of 
France and Germany; but as Swiss pasturage, and Swiss care, 
and love for the cow are not exportable, these agricultural im- 
provements generally fail. The Swiss cows are very handsome 
animals, and of great value. A fine cow will sell for .£20 sterling 
*in Switzerland. Such a cow in England would bring the same 
price in any good market. In all this branch of husbandry, the 
small farming system is not in any respect behind the large 
farming system. In corn husbandry, from the nature of the 
country, no very extensive tracts dedicated entirely to raising 
corn-crops are met with, except in the cantons of Bern, Thurgovia, 
and a few other localities. To judge of the agriculture of a 
country by the appearance of the crops on the ground, of the 
working stock, utensils, drainage, fencing, and attention to ma- 
nure, and from the state of all farm buildings and accommoda- 
tions, Switzerland stands very high even as a corn country well 
farmed. 

The peculiar feature in the condition of the Swiss population 



SWISS AGRICULTURE. 171 

— the great charm of Switzerland, next to its natural scenery — 
is the air of well-being, the neatness, the sense of property im- 
printed on the people, their dwellings, their plots of land. They 
have a kind of Robinson Crusoe industry about their houses and 
little properties; they are perpetually building, repairing, altering, 
or improving, something about their tenements. The spirit of 
the proprietor is not to be mistaken in all that one sees in Swit- 
zerland. Some cottages, for instance, are adorned with long texts 
from Scripture painted on or burnt into the wood in front over 
the door; others, especially in the Simmenthal and the Hasletnal, 
with the pedigree of the builder and owner. These show, some- 
times, that the property has been held for 200 years by the same 
family. The modern taste of the proprietor shows itself in new 
windows, or additions to the old original picturesque dwelling, 
which, with its immense projecting roof, sheltering or shading 
all these successive little additions, looks like a hen sitting with 
a brood of chickens under her wings. The little spots of land, 
each close no bigger than a garden, show the same daily care in 
the fencing, digging, weeding, and watering. The vineyard hus- 
bandry is altogether a garden cultivation, in which manual labour 
— unassisted by animal power, scarcely even by the simplest me- 
chanical contrivance, such as wheel-barrows, harrows, or other 
assisting implements to the basket, hoe, and spade — does every 
operation ; and this gives the character to all their husbandry ; 
hand-labour is applied to all crops, such as potatoes, Indian corn, 
and even common grain crops, more extensively, both in digging 
and cleaning the laud, than with us. It is not uncommon to 
find agricultural villages without a horse ; and all cultivation 
done by hand, especially where the main article of husbandry 
is either dairy produce or that of the vineyard, to either of 
which horse work is unnecessary. I confess I do not like a vine- 
farm. The vineyard is but a garden. The hand-labour is inces- 
sant in ail the different operations, and yet it is not, like the hand- 
labourin agarden, applied to but a few fruit trees, or plants, or beds, 
with which you form a kind of acquaintance that ripens into friend- 
ship in the course of years. The vines are too many, and each too 
insignificant by itself for that kind of pleasure, and the land under 
vines being always under vines, you don't get intimate either with 
the acres or beds, as in corn and grass husbandry, nor with the indi- 
vidual plants, as in gardening. Then the eye has nothing agree- 
able to dwell upon in the dotty effect of a field of vines ; and the 
ear misses the rural music of a farm — the crowing of the cock — 



172 SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE SWISS. 

the lowing of the cattle — the sound of the flail. In sheep- farm- 
ing, cattle-farming, horse-breeding, corn-farming, orchard, or 
kitchen-gardening, or flower-gardening, a man may be an ama- 
teur, may have a singular delight, a very craze — but I could 
never hear of any such feeling about vine-farming. It is in spite 
of poetry a dull manufacture. 

Two circumstances attending the great diffusion of landed 
property among the people strike the traveller in Switzerland : 
one is the great perfection it gives to their social arrangements. 
I lodged in a little hamlet (Veytaux), so inconsiderable that it 
could not support a shop, nor a shoemaker, tailor, or tradesman 
living by his trade. I found, however, that there was a regular 
post-office in the place, although it was not a thoroughfare to other 
places; a regular watchman by night, calling the hours as in great 
to wns ; t wo public fountains, with regulations for keeping them clean 
painted on boards at the spouts ; a kind of market-place, in which 
all the orders or edicts of the canton, or of the federal government 
were posted up, under a wire covering, for the public information ; 
and a fire-engine in good order, and which occasionally was 
brought out, and the people exercised in its use. Towns of 
twenty or thirty times the population in Scotland and England 
have no such social arrangements. I am speaking of a hamlet 
of thirty or at the outside forty houses. The other circumstance 
which strikes the traveller is the condition and appearance of the 
female sex, as it is affected by the distribution of land among 
the labouring class. None of the women are exempt from field- 
work, not even in the families of very substantial peasant pro- 
prietors, whose houses are furnished as well as any country manse 
with us. All work as regularly as the poorest male individual. 
The land, however, being their own, they have a choice of work, 
and the hard work is generally done by the men. The felling 
and bringing home wood for fuel, the mowing grass generally, 
but not always, the carrying out manure on tbeir backs, the 
handling horses and cows, digging, and such heavy labour, is man's 
work ; the binding the vine to the pole with a straw, which is 
done three times in the course of its growth, the making the hay, 
the pinning the vine, twitching off the superfluous leaves and 
tendrils, — these lighter yet necessary j obs to be done about vine- 
yards, or orchards, form the women's work. But females, both 
in France and Switzerland, appear to have a far more important 
role in the family, among the lower and middle classes, than with 
us. The female, although not exempt from out-door work, and 



SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE SWISS. 173 

even hard work, undertakes the thinking and managing depart- 
ment in the family affairs, and the husband is but the executive 
officer. The female is, in fact, very remarkably superior in man- 
ners, habits, tact, and intelligence, to the husband, in almost 
every family of the middle or lower classes in Switzerland. One 
is surprised to see the wife of such good, even genteel manners, 
and sound sense, and altogether such a superior person to her 
station; and the husband very often a mere lout. The hen is 
the better bird all over Switzerland. This is, perhaps, an effect 
of the military or servile employments of a great proportion of 
the male population during youth, and of the mercenary spirit 
too prevalent in Switzerland. In France, also, the female takes 
her full share of business with the male part of the family, in. 
keeping accounts and books, and selling goods, and in both coun- 
tries occupies a higher and more rational social position certainly 
than with us. This seems to be the effect of the distribution of 
property, by which the female has her share and interest as well 
as the male, and grows up with the same personal interest and 
sense of property in all around her. 



174 LYONS : ITS MANUFACTUEING SYSTEM. 



CHAPTER XL 

LYONS. — ON ITS MANUFACTURING SYSTEM. — NOTES ON AVIGNON. FRENCH 

BARRACKS. COOKERY ITS EFFECTS ON NATIONAL WEALTH. 

Lyons, with its narrow dark streets and lofty old houses on 
each side, resembles some of the old parts of the old town of 
Edinburgh. It is built at the confluence of the Rhone and 
Saone, upon a flat tongue of land, so narrow that the stranger is 
surprised, on taking the breadth of the city, to come so soon from 
the one river quay to the other; and on taking its length in his 
walk, he can scarcely believe that this is the second city in 
France, a city nearly as populous as Edinburgh. In 1831, it 
contained 165,459 inhabitants; and Edinburgh in 1831, reckoned 
178,371. But on looking more carefully, the traveller perceives 
that the secondary streets are remarkably narrow, the houses 
very lofty and densely inhabited, each a little town of people 
within itself, and, as in Edinburgh, a great proportion of the 
inhabitants lodge in the air, not on the surface of the earth. 

In this chief seat of the silk manufacture in France, and, at 
no distant period, in Europe, the manufacturing arrangements 
are apparently ill adapted to the improvement, extension, or 
even the future existence of its trade, against the competition 
of England, Prussia, and Switzerland. The old leaven of the 
corporation system sticks to Lyons; and the distress in which 
her operatives are so frequently plunged, that their whole exis- 
tence, it may be said, is distress, is very much the consequence 
of a faulty arrangement of business, not suitable to the times. 
The master-manufacturer has no factory and workmen constantly 
in his employ. He merely buys the raw material, and gives it 
out to be sorted, spun, dyed, and put in a state for the silk weaver. 
In these operations, which are not conducted in his own pre- 
mises or factory, he has but very imperfect checks upon embezzle- 
ment, and none upon waste. The division of labour in a manu- 
facture is not always economical. It is a very nice point, in 
practice, to judge of its applicability, and to adjust it to advan- 
tage. Cheap production may arise from a division of labour 
under one head or master-manufacturer; but faulty processes, 
loss of time, and a waste of labour and means, may arise from 



LYONS : ITS MANUFACTURING SYSTEM. 175 

a division among different sub-capitals, and independent operators, 
of such labour or operations as are essential for producing a good 
and cheap product. It requires great judgment to determine — 
happily, self-interest is the surest guide — what maybe left to others 
to prepare, and what the manufacturer must, from first to last, 
carry on himself. In Lyons, in the silk trade, the laying or 
preparing the pattern for the loom is the work of independent 
workmen ; although the patterns are produced by a draughtsman 
who is generally a partner with the master-manufacturer. The 
weavers again are independent workmen, living and working 
each in his own shop, with two or three looms for different 
kinds of fabric, and with journeymen to work them. He lodges 
and boards the journeymen, finds the looms and the work, and 
gets one-half or one-third of their earnings, according to the regu- 
lations, or customs, of the craft, as established for the different 
stuffs or fabrics. This master-weaver is paid for the work by 
the master- manufacturer, so much per ell. This is the state of 
infancy in manufacturing operations with us — -a happy infancy, 
but still a state of infancy in which capital has not been accu- 
mulated, or machinery invented, to enable the master-manufac- 
turer to concentrate his operations. 

It is evident that the eye and superintendence of the master- 
manufacturer cannot be given to quality and economy, where 
every operation essential to the manufacture is not under one 
roof or one guidance, with partners and managers attending it, 
and with workmen responsible directly to one head, and whose 
hands are always kept employed in the same kinds of work. 
When the web is done it is too late to check faulty workmanship, 
or save the character of the goods, by putting better workmen or 
better material to it. As long as the Continent had only Lyons, 
and England only her French colony in Spitalfields, to look to for 
the greater part of their silk fabrics, the system went on ; but 
when Manchester, Paisley, and, on the Continent, Zurich, and 
other places, took up the silk trade upon different manufacturing 
principles, the superior economy and quality of their fabrics 
ruined these old seats of the silk manufacture. England, about 
twelve years ago, was reckoned to have about 10,000 looms 
engaged in the silk manufacture, and is now reckoned to have 
about 80,000. Lyons and its neighbourhood has now but 
31,000; and Zurich and its neighbourhood is reckoned to have 
above 20,000. In all that regards the preparation of the silk, 
and the texture and quality of the stuffs, the English excel the 



176 LYONS : ITS MAmTFAOTUEINGr SYSTEM. 

French manufacturers, and in economy so decidedly that the ell 
of silk stuff which cannot be produced at Lyons under the cost 
for labour of 120 to 125 centimes, cost in labour only 40 cen- 
times in England. A certain number of privileged workmen 
are alone entitled to set up as masters in the weaving and 
other branches of the silk manufacture at Lyons, and are 
entitled to exclude others from the exercise of their trade. They 
must have served as apprentices and as journeymen for certain 
periods, and cannot set up for themselves without large fees of 
entry for the freedom of the craft, be the demand for looms 
ever so great. The French Revolution gave political liberty 
only to the people — the forms of constitutional government — 
but gave them no civil liberty, nor to this day is civil liberty, 
or the perfect freedom of every citizen to act for hi in self without 
interference, understood or thought of by the French people, 
any more than before the Revolution. The municipal taxes 
on the transit of goods through towns, the leave and licence 
necessary to carry industry from one locality to another, and 
the restraints upon its free exercise, as here in silk weaving, are 
in full vigour. The only argument in favour of this system of 
corporate privileges is, that it allows the small capitalist as well 
as the large to live, and this is not an argument to be despised 
in social economy. The weaver with his two or three looms 
has an independent existence; and, however inefficient as a 
producer of silk fabrics at the cheapest rate compared to the 
master-manufacturer who has a couple of hundred looms, perhaps, 
at work under his eye, with all that precedes and follows the 
weaving going on simultaneously, he is one of a body far more 
valuable in social relation than the two or three great capitalists 
who supersede this body of middle class manufacturers. But 
this is, unhappily, the natural and unavoidable progress of 
manufacturing industry. Large capital, when it comes into com- 
petition with small capital in the world's wide market, inevitably 
drives the small out of the field. An aristocracy of large 
capitalists obtains the possession, the property it may be called, 
of supplying all human wants, and holds it by the best of all 
tenures — that of being able to supply mankind cheapest. It is 
a manufacturing and physical good, but a social and moral evih 
The actual operative in Great Britain has no prospect before 
him. He may save a few hundred pounds by unceasing industry 
and sobriety; but why should he save it? This little saved 
capital — call it thousands instead of hundreds of pounds sterling 



LYONS : ITS MANUFACTURING SYSTEM. 177 

— can do nothing in the present state of our trade and manu- 
factures, in competition with the vast capitals, accumulated by 
long inheritance, pre-occupying every branch of industry and 
manufacture, and producing far cheaper than he can do with his 
trifling means. Land, by the effect of the privileges accorded to 
that kind of property, and of the expense of title deeds, is out of 
his reach as much as trade and manufacture; there being no small 
estates in Britain, generally speaking, which a labouring or 
middle class man could purchase and sit down upon with his 
family to live as a working yeoman, or peasant proprietor; and 
thus small capitals when they are accumulated are forced into 
trade and manufacture, although every branch is over-supplied 
with the means of producing. What can a man turn to who 
has a little capital of three or four thousand pounds'? What 
can he enter into with any reasonable prospect of not losing his 
little capital in Ms most honest and prudent efforts? And 
what can the working man do, but spend his earnings, drink, and 
fall into a reckless improvident way of living, when he sees 
clearly that every avenue to an independent condition is, by the 
power of great capital, shut against him? A vassalage in manu- 
facture and trade is succeeding the vassalage in land, and the 
serf of the loom f is in a lower and more helpless condition than 
the serf of the glebe, because his condition appears to be not 
merely the effect of an artificial and faulty social economy, like 
the feudal, which may be remedied, but to be the unavoidable 
effect of natural causes. Mankind will naturally prefer the 
best and cheapest goods. Great capitals will naturally produce 
better and cheaper, than small capitals applied to the same 
objects. Corporations, trade restrictions, privileges either of 
masters or workmen, and all such local or partial legislation, 
add to, instead of curing the evil, for they can only reach the 
producers, not the consumers; and few, indeed, are the branches 
of industry, in which the producers have a command of the 
market. The feudalisation going on in our manufacturing social 
economy is very conspicuous in some of the great cotton fac- 
tories. The master-manufacturer in some districts, who employs 
eight hundred or a thousand hands, deals in reality only with 
fifty or sixty sub-vassals or operative cotton spinners, as they are 
technically called, who undertake the working of so many looms, 
or spinning jennies. They hire and pay the men, women, and 
children, who are the real operatives, grinding their wages 
down to the lowest rate, and getting the highest they can out 

N 



178 LYONS j ITS MANUFACTURING SYSTEM. 

of the master manufacturer. A strike is often the operation of 
these middle men, and productive of little benefit to, and even 
against the will of the actual workmen. They are, in the 
little imperium of the factory, the equivalent to the feudal 
barons. 

In a few branches of the silk trade, in the elegance of pattern, 
and in some few dyes, the Lyons manufacturer still has a pre- 
eminence. The draughtsman and dyer are educated in the 
branches of science and fine art connected with their trade. 
Science and good taste in colours and patterns are more diffused 
in France by education, social habits, and cultivation even among 
the working class, than among our middle class. In every de- 
partmental town, a public school of design for the working class, 
and exhibitions of models, and objects connected with the culti- 
vation of taste, are established. Elegance, and variety of fashion 
in patterns, can, it is probable, never be overtaken by machi- 
nery, or by the class of workmen who are but parts in a machine, 
so well as by the manual labour of independent workmen of 
taste and skill, under the French system. In the figured stuffs 
in which hand-labour is not and cannot be superseded by machi- 
nery on account of the changeable and short-lived fashion, the 
French workmen excel ours, and can work 25 per cent, cheaper. 
Fashion is too evanescent and variable to be followed up closely 
by machinery; and formerly our corn laws, and other taxes 
affecting labour, turned the balance against us, where hand-labour 
was in competition with hand-labour. It is, however, a remark- 
able sign of the times, that what is called fashion in colour, 
patterns, and materials of dress, appears to be growing less 
changeable and fantastic as the world grows older. As the body 
of the middle and lower classes, and not merely the court and 
highest class, become consumers, and regulate the market, good 
taste, or taste with reference to the useful in its requirements, 
becomes more prevalent, and its application more steady. One 
no where sees now, as fifty years ago, except, it may be, in remote 
little German towns, skyblue, or pink, or green, or pompadour 
coats, or people walking the streets in silk stockings, silk breeches, 
and powdered hair. The taste of the middle class, the mass of 
the consumers, has invaded the empire of fashion, and, in fact, 
sets the fashion to the higher classes ; and the nobleman now 
would be laughed at, who appeared in any other shape, colour, 
or material of clothing, than the well-dressed tradesman. Exclu- 
siveness, the soul of fashion, cannot exist in the present cheap. 



LYONS ; ITS MANUFACTURING SYSTEM. 179 

extensive production of clothing material. This greater steadi- 
ness of fashion with the great mass of the consumers of cloth, 
cotton, and silk, and the longer endurance, and greater extension 
of the demand for any fashion that once gets established, enable 
machinery and large capital to work even upon objects which 
would have been left formerly to hand- work; and the field for 
hand-loom weavers is narrowed to the production of a few fancy 
articles. The hand-loom weavers in the silk trade in Lyons 
appear to have been for the last hundred years in no superior 
or more prosperous condition than those in Spitalfields. 

As far back as 1740, it appears by a petition to the local 
authorities at Lyons for raising the rates of weaving the ell of 
silk stuff, that the earnings of a master- weaver with three looms 
in full work all the year, fell short of the necessary expense of a 
family living in the poorest way. The statement of the hand- 
loom weavers reckons 296 working days (52 Sundays, 17 holidays, 
and 6 days of military town guard duty, being deducted), and 
reckons 800 ells a year the production of each loom. Bread is 
taken at 2 sous per lb., and 10 lbs. as the daily allowance of a 
man, his wife, two children, and a journeyman. Meat is taken 
at 6 sous, and 2± lbs. daily for such a family, and wine 1 pint, 
at 6 sous; and to meet this condition of subsistence with such a 
family in fall work, the earnings are shown to be deficient. How 
then has this class of operatives existed through a century? By 
going down lower in the scale of subsistence, in the enjoyment 
of the comforts and necessaries of life. It is impossible to fore- 
see how low the condition of many masses of population may be 

reduced in the working manufacturing classes. It has no rami- 
es O 

mum of depression, as there appears to be in the condition of the 
working agricultural class. The reproduction of the husband- 
man's food and of seed for the following crop, is the point below 
which the condition of the labouring husbandman cannot per- 
manently fall. Population and cultivation stop at that point ; 
and overproduction is a good, not an evil, where the producers 
are themselves the principal consumers. In manufacturing 
industry, there is no such defined terminus. Labour and pro- 
duction go on, whether food and cost are reproduced by the 
operatives or not ; and overprod action is followed by famine to 
them. The very prosperity of one great body reduces another 
great body to want in manufacturing industry. One would 
almost think there is a balance point in social well-being, wmich 
society has already reached, and that now the higher one end is 



180 AVIGNON. FRENCH BARRACKS. 

mounting, the lower the other end is descending. Although the 
peculiar manufacture of Lyons, the silk weaving, is declining, 
the country round Lyons is flourishing. Building, repairing, 
whitewashing, are going on briskly in the villages. New cotton 
or flax factories, iron- works, and steam-engine chimneys are 
rising along the river side. Steam-boats, rail-roads from coal 
works and quarries, river craft carrying goods, iron suspension- 
bridges across the stream, are far more numerous on the Rhone 
than on the Rhine, — bustle and business far more advanced. 
Industry, in spite of the trammels on its free development, is on 
the move in this part of France, although its objects are changing 
from the manufacturing of one single article of luxury, silk, to 
the production of a great variety of useful articles, for which 
the command of coal and water carriage in this district gives 
peculiar facilities. This will be a great manufacturing district, 
and only wants civil liberty to be so : it surpasses already, in the 
activity on the waters, and in the numbers of new factories, and 
manufacturing villages, and establishments on their banks, the 
German manufacturing districts on the Rhine. Here they are 
doing, — there they are but dreaming of doing. 

The ancient palace of the popes at Avignon is now converted 
into a barrack for infantry. The popes resided at Avignon 
full 73 years, from 1303 to 1376. There is nothing remaining 
of those times, but the outward shell of the buildings, and the 
names of the different chambers — the chamber of inquisition, the 
chamber of torture, the chamber of execution, and among the 
inhabitants of the town and neighbourhood, it is said, a tendency 
to favour despotism, fanaticism, and legitimacy in royal rights. 
The chambers in the old papal residence, so agreeably handed 
down to posterity by their religious uses, and in which the names 
of victims are said to be legible on the plaster of the walls — 
subject to the doubt if writing was so ordinary an accomplish- 
ment in the fourteenth century — were washed in blood at the 
revolution. The crimes and sufferings spread over a century 
were surpassed in a day. And now these chambers of blood 
resound with the careless laugh and merry vaudeville of the 
young soldiery. A French barrack is worth seeing. The beds 
appear particularly good. Each private had a bed to himself on 
an iron bedstead. In our service, two and even three men are 
laid in one bed. The French peasantry, even in the lowest con- 
dition, are accustomed to good beds. A high pile of bedding 
seems a kind of ornamental furniture indispensably neces- 



COOKERY : ITS EFFECTS, ETC. 181 

in their ideas of housekeeping ; and you see even in the single 
room households of 'the poor, a kind of* display in the neatness 
and quantity of bedding. This taste has probably spread so 
widely as to act upon the military accommodation. Each bed 
had a brown cloth coverlet neatly covering the bed clothes, and 
the sheets and mattresses were as clean and nicely done up as in 
any hospital. — In this barrack it struck me as characteristic of 
the good relation between the officers and men, that on the inside 
of the door was stuck up a notice, that it would not be reputable 
to be seen in certain streets mentioned, on account of houses of 
ill-fame in them. 

A great quantity of very good wit which might have served 
the owners for any of their lawful occasions, was expended some 
years ago upon the subject of cookery. The French began witli 
their Science Gastro?2omique, their Almanacs des Gourmands, 
their saucepans and gridirons of honour, and a thousand equally 
witty sayings and doings. Our manufacturers of roast and 
boiled, and printed paper, our Kitcheners, Udes, and Glasses, 
were not behind, and mixed up their flour and melted butter 
with wit and philosophy as well as their neighbours. . The sub- 
ject is not quite so ridiculous as it has been made. The food of 
a people, and its preparation, are closely connected with their 
industry and civilisation. The female half of the human species 
do little other work in most communities but cook : and much 
more than half of all the work of the other moiety is applied to 
the direct production of the materials for cooking. The least 
observant and least hungry of travellers abroad is struck with 
admiration at the readiness with which a dinner of eight or ten 
dishes of various eatables makes its appearance in foreign inns, 
and remembers with no patriotic feelings the never-ready per- 
petual mutton-chop and mashed potatoes of the English road. 
Yet much of our national prosperity and wealth, much of the 
capital and productiveness of our labouring and middle classes, 
and especially of the industrious who are in a state of transition 
from the one class to the other, may be ascribed to the greater 
simplicity and frugality of diet among us ; and particularly to 
the great saving of time and labour in its preparation. A work- 
ing man, tradesman, or man of the labouring or middle class in 
ordinary employment, sits down abroad to a much better dinner 
than a man of good realised capital and in a thriving way with 
us. The three or four well-dressed dishes, principally of legumes 
or other cheap materials, cost the foreigner less perhaps in money. 



182 cookehy : 

than the bread and cheese, or simply-cooked mutton and potatoes 
of the English dinner of the man of the sarus class. This is the 
main economical advantage, indeed, which absentee families 
promise themselves from settling abroad. It is to them, no 
doubt, an advantage. They eat and drink more sumptuously 
than they could at home for the same money. But this way 
of living is of great social disadvantage to the people among 
whom it is habitual. Its cheapness is but a delusion. The 
political economist will differ widely from the traveller, in hi3 
opinion of its superiority. It costs a vast deal more time and 
labour to bring all this finely-cooked food together : it costs, at 
the least, twice as much of human time and labour to dine five 
millions of French or German people, as to dine five millions of 
English : and time and labour, be it remembered, are the basis 
of all national wealth and prosperity. Time and labour employed 
unreproductively are capital thrown away. The meals of the 
Englishman and of the Continental man end equally in satiating 
appetite, and recruiting strength. If this end be attained in 
England, by an hour s work of one person in a family of five in 
the ordinary station of life of our working and middle class, 
cooking generally but a single meal in the day in the simplest 
way, and on the Continent, owing to the general habit of living, 
the more complicated forms of cookery, and the more frequent 
meals, if the cooking for such a family occupies one of its 
members the whole day, the English family evidently has saved 
most capital, or that from which alone capital is produced — time 
and labour — in a given period. The loss of time in the eating 
and preparation of food, the numerous meals, dishes, and modes 
of cookery, form a very important drawback on the prosperity of 
families on the Continent in that station in which with us very 
little time, indeed, is expended in eating or cooking. It is an 
important diminution of the means of national wealth. Gour- 
mandise is found also to be a vice as troublesome to deal with 
among the French soldiery, as tippling among ours. The craving 
for variety of food and cookery leads to most of the irregularitieL 
and depredations in the field, of which the French armies are 
accused. The variety in food, and in its complicated preparation, 
which is so blended with the habits of living on the Continent 
that even the poor have the craving for it, appears by no means 
necessary or conducive to health. A remarkably smaller pro- 
portion of the labouring and middle classes abroad are healthy- 
looking individuals, with blooming looks, pure teeth, and all 



ITS EFFECTS ON NATIONAL WEALTH. 183 

external indications of vigorous animal condition, than in our 
more simply fed population. It is evidently such a drawback 
on the acquiring of capital in the lower stations of life, that the 
want of a middle class of capitalists — of men who rise by indus- 
try and frugality from common labour to a wider circle of 
business — is very much to be ascribed to this habitual waste of 
time and labour in their family living and house-keeping. They 
spend in immediate gratification the beginnings of a working 
capital. The national wealth and prosperity is materially 
affected by this cause, trifling and ridiculous as it appears to be 
in stating it in a single case. In the total, however, it is fully 
a fifth of the time and labour of a Continental population, that 
is daily wasted in cookery and eating. 



184 GENOA. 



CHAPTER XII. 

^'OTES ON GENOA POOR OF GENOA — CAUSES OF THE DECLINE OF GENOA. 

Genoa — Genoa the superb ! I first set my foot on Italian 
land on the mole of Genoa. Who does not picture to himself, 
on approaching the mole of Genoa, the grand days of this once 
powerful republic — her doges, her Doria, and all her magnificent 
aristocracy stepping in splendid array on board of gallant fleets, 
that carried her dominion over the realms of the East? How 
unromantic is reality ! The moles of Genoa, as works of mag- 
nificence and art, are but shabby quays, not to be named on the 
same day with the quays of Leith, Dundee, Aberdeen, or dozens 
of our third-rate shipping towns on the British coast. I see m 
Genoa only a town of eighty thousand inhabitants, covering 
about as much ground as Aberdeen, built at the foot and on the 
•slopes of some rocky barren knolls of about the same elevation, 
and as bare, as the upper half of Arthur's Seat near Edinburgh, 
and which surround a bight of the coast, called by courtesy a 
bay, of about the size of one of the larger wet docks at Liverpool, 
at the bottom of a gulph of the Mediterranean. This bight is 
made a tolerably secure port by two piers or moles dividing it 
into an outer and inner harbour; the latter for small craft, and 
containing a good many of them, and the other for larger 
vessels, of which, that is, of brigs and traders to foreign parts, 
there might be a score or more — a show of masts certainly in- 
ferior to what we see daily in our third-rate ports, such as Dun- 
dee, Aberdeen, or Leith. This is, next to Leghorn, the greatest 
commercial port on this side of Italy — one of the main mouths 
of the export and import of a population equal to that of Great 
Britain — so that the poor muster of sea-going vessels in it 
surprises the traveller. 

The streets of Genoa are in general so narrow that two ladies 
in the huge sleeves lately in fashion would certainly stick if they 
met each other. They are all paved with fiat stones of a foot or 
two square, laid diagonally, and with an open channel in the 
middle of the alley for the run of water. Climate is a better 
scavenger than the dean of guild, or dirt-bailie of our ancient 



GENOA. 185 

Scotch burghs. These narrow Wynds and Closes of Genoa are 
not dirty, and from the constant draught of air through such 
narrow funnels, are sweet and cool in hot weather. The build- 
ings on each side of these narrow alleys are palaces — lofty, 
magnificent, extensive palaces rising to the skies, excluding 
heat and even light from the two-legged insects dressed in brown 
woollen cloaks crawling between them. 

Here in Genoa, the imaginative traveller may revel in his 
descriptions of orange groves, vine-clad hills, and marble palaces, 
mingled in luxuriant magnificence, and rising against a back- 
ground of heaven-high peaks of snow cutting into a deep blue 
sky above, and washed beneath by a sea still more intensely 
blue. But that miserable proseman, the political economist, goes 
dodging about this magnificent city, the city of palaces, the 
Genova la Superba, asking, Where do your middle classes live ? 
"Where did they live in the days of Genoa's greatness ] He sees 
now, that the same roof covers the beggar and the prince ; for 
on the ground-floors, under the marble staircases, and marble- 
paved halls, and superb state rooms on the first-floor, there are 
vaults, holes, and coachhouse-like places opening into the streets, 
in which the labouring class and small shopkeepers pig together, 
living, cooking, and doing all family work, half and half in the 
open air. But was this always so 1 Where did, or where do 
they live, who are neither princes nor beggars ] Who are a 
degree above porters, or day labourers, or the small shopkeeper 
or tradesman living by their custom, in the means and habits of 
a civilised existence ] Where be the snug, comfortable, suitable 
dwellings for this middle class, the pith and marrow of a nation, 
which cover the land in England and Scotland so entirely, that 
the great mansion is the exception, not the rule in our national 
habitations, wealthy as the nation is ? Here, all is palace, and 
I all is noblesse, public functionary, and beggar. They reckon in 
\ Genoa, in clerical function alone, -6,000 persons, and 7,000 
military. Sweep away the edifices of nobility, those appropriated 
to public functionaries and their business, together with churches, 
convents, hospitals, barracks, theatres, and such public buildings, 
and Genoa would scarcely be a town. Yet Genoa is not a poor 
town in one sense. Many of these palaces are inhabited lay k 
wealthy nobility, and, it is said, there are more capitalists, more 
great capitalists in Genoa, than in any town in Italy. To have 
erected, and to keep up such palaces as they live in, or even to 
afford so much dead stock as is invested in the mere material, 



186 GEXOA. 

the marble, gilding, pictures of value, ornaments, and costly 
furniture, speaks of enormous wealth, both in past and present 
days. Some traveller tells us, that the Italian noble will go on 
building and building at a family palace from generation to 
generation, living in the meantime in a corner of it, or in a 
garret, poorly and shabbily. This is certainly not the case here. I 
underwent the usual sight-seeing penance of the traveller, and was 
trotted by a valet-de-place through sundry magnificent palaces ; 
the Palavicini, the Brignoli, the Durazzi, and others. These 
appeared to me as complete in furniture, establishment of ser- 
vants, and all the magnificence of life, as any nobleman's 
mansion in any country. In one palace, for instance, as we 
entered the hall in the morning about nine o'clock, the chaplain 
of the family was going into the drawing-room to read family 
prayers, the servants went in after him, a goodly number, nsatiy 
dressed, just as in any orderly English family of high rank, and 
we were asked to wait in an adjoining room, until the service was 
over and the family had retired to the breakfast-room, in order 
to show us some paintings of note in the grand drawing-room. 
' It was more interesting than the pictures to see this magnificent 
apartment, although gilded, curtained, chandeliered, and orna- 
mented with a costliness suitable for the residence of a crowned 
head, yet comfortably as well as splendidly furnished, with a 
carpet fully covering the floor, a blazing lire in the chimney, 
tables covered with books, ladies' work in baskets and work- 
bags, scattered about the room, and with a home look of daily 
use and domestic enjoyment about every thing, which resembled 
the taste of English life. Many of the old wealthy mercantile 
nobility have apparently fallen from their high estate, and, in 
the course of ages, have been extinguished, or become im- 
poverished ; for vast edifices, in fact, costly palaces, are occupied 
by innkeepers and others, who could never have built them for 
the uses they are now put to ; but evidently a class of very 
great capitalists remain. They, with a very great body of desti- 
tute people, and the military, civil functionaries, clergy,- and the 
small dealers and tradesmen living by their expenditure, now 
constitute the population of this once powerful republic. 

May not the history of Genoa's commercial greatness and 
decline become, in the course of ages, that of England's ? May 
not the one show in small, what the other will come to in large ? 
Is not the same element of decay common to the social economy 



GENOA. 187 

of both? It is in the nature of trade and manufacture, that 
great capital drives small capital out of the field; it can afford 
to work for smaller returns. There is a natural tendency in 
trade to monopoly, by the accumulation of great wealth in few 
hands. It is not impossible, that in every branch of trade and 
manufacture in Britain, the great capitalist will, in time, entirely 
occupy the field, and put down small capitalists in the same 
lines of business; that a monied aristocracy, similar to that here 
in Genoa, will gradually be formed, the middle class of small 
capitalists in trade and manufacture become gradually extin- 
guished, and a structure of society gradually arise, in which 
lords and labourers will be the only classes or gradations in the 
commercial and manufacturing, as in the landed system. An 
approximation, a tendency towards this state, is going on in 
England. In many branches of industry — for instance, in glass- 
making, iron-founding, soap-making, cotton-spinning, the great 
capitalists engaged in them have, by the natural effect of working 
with great capital, driven small capitals out of the field, and 
formed a kind of exclusive family property of some of these bran- 
ches of manufacture. Government, by excessive taxation and 
excise regulation, both of which have ultimately the effect, as 
in the glass and soap manufacture and distillery business, of giv- 
ing a monopoly to the great capitalist who can afford the delay 
and advance of money these impediments require, has been hith- 
erto aiding, rather than counteracting, this tendency of great 
capital to swallow 111 the employments in which small capital 
can act. It is a question practically undetermined, whether the 
experiment into which this tendency has forced society within 
these few years, the junction of small capitalists in joint-stock, 
subscription, or share companies, can compete in productive in- 
dustry, with great capital in the hands of one or two partners 
wielding great means with the energy, activity, and frugality of 
an individual, r It is not an imaginary, nor perhaps a very dis- 
tant evil, that our middle classes with their small capitals may 
sink into nothing, may become, as here, tradesmen or small deal- 
ers supplying a few great manufacturing and commercial fami- 
lies with the articles of their household consumpt, and rearing 
supernumerary candidates for unnecessary public functions, civil, 
military, or clerical ; and that in trade, as in land, a noblesse of 
capitalists, and a population of serfs working for them, may 
come to be the two main constituent parts in our social structure. 



188 POOR OF GENOA. 

A Genoa in large, England may possibly become — with one small 
class living in almost royal splendour and luxury; and the great 
mass of the community in rags and hunger. 

I went to see the poor-house in Genoa, a vast ancient palace 
in which about 1800 poor are kept upon the principle of making 
them work for their living. Work, or material of various kinds 
suited to the trade or ability of the pauper, is given out to each, 
and, when finished, it is sold or valued, the cost of the material 
and of the rations of food or other necessaries supplied to the 
pauper while producing it, deducted, and the balance paid to 
him in money. Rational as this principle of relief appears to 
be, I am in doubt whether it answers well, or rather in no doubt 
that it answers ill. In the small population of a town, the 
effects may be more distinctly traced than in an extensive 
national system upon the same principle ; but the effects must 
be the same. The kinds of employment given to the pauper are 
^necessarily those which the poor usually live by, and which 
require few, and not expensive tools, and are easily acquired and 
exercised ; such as coarse. weaving, rope-making, ordinary joiner- 
work, shoe-making, tailoring of slop clothes, <fcc. Among 80,000 
people in a town, the work of 1800 working in a poor-house, or 
as out-door paupers, at the common trades of the poorer class, 
displaces exactly so much of the work of the latter, makes them 
poorer — is robbing Peter to pay Paul. The poor artisan whose 
market is anticipated, and overstocked by a forced production 
from the poor-house, and at a cheaper rate* than he who has to 
buy the material by retail can afford to produce the article, 
must go to the poor-house himself. This is clearly the effect, in 
the great as in the small, of applying public or subscribed capital 
to pauperism, in a way that interferes with any branch of indus- 
try in which the poor usually employ their own time and laboui 
to keep them out of pauperism. If this be true, the only kinu 
of industry which is suitable either for pauper or penal employ 
ment in a community, is that which interferes with the means 
of living of no other class in the community : and that is only 
labour applied to the direct production of the pauper or penal 
labourer s own food and necessaries, as in the poor colonies in 
Holland, either in husbandry, fishery, or work connected with 
what they themselves consume. 

When we reflect on the former greatness and the present de- 
cay of this once powerful state, how important the lesson it 
teaches ! not the common- place lesson only of the instability of 



DECLINE OF GENOA ; ITS CAUSES. 189 

human greatness — but that the misapplication of capital, or 
rather of human industry — for capital is the command of human 
labour and time, embodied in the form of money — is the cause 
of the instability of greatness in empires, as in individuals. 
Look at this city of Genoa ! at the millions upon millions that have 
been expended unreproductively ! The loom, the ship, the steam- 
engine, the factory, reproduce their own cost with a profit, and 
the whole is laid out again and again, and to the latest genera- 
tion, reproductively ; but the palace, the gorgeous ornament, 
the pageant, the display of "pomp and power in fleets and armies 
and courtly splendour, reproduce nothing. The labourer earns 
his needful food daring the time he is employed in producing 
them ; that done, he is no richer than at first, and the means of 
his employer to re-employ him, the capital which, laid out in 
a reproductive way, would have gone on to all posterity, aug- 
menting and extending employment, well-being, and civilisation, 
is fixed clown and buried in a pile of stones. The labourers of 
the day earned their wages for piling them together, consumed 
and paid for their meat and drink during the time, and that 
is all the result of the outlay of capital, which, if the Genoese 
nobles had employed it reproductively in manufacturing or 
transporting the objects of civilised life for the consumers, instead 
of in building huge palaces, would have vivified the East. Capital 
is a bank-note for so much human labour. If its value is not 
reproduced by its outlay, the holder of it is wasting his means, 
and the industrious of the country suffer a loss. 

I mourn not for Genoa. Distant countries conquered, 
plundered, oppressed, reduced to subjection and barbarism, to 
enable a wealthy and ostentatious aristocracy to vie with each 
other in splendid extravagance — the middle class extinguished, 
the useful arts and manufactures, those which diffuse comfort 
and civilisation through society, and extend by their productive 
action the sphere of human industry, postponed to the ornamen- 
tal or fine arts, to those which administer only to the luxurious 
enjoyment of the few, and add little or nothing to the means of 
living, well-being, and industry of the many — in the downfall of 
such a state — of a people of princes and beggars — what is there 
to regret l Lord Castlereagh need not turn him in his grave, if 
the annihilation of the Genoese aristocracy be the greatest of his 
diplomatic sins. 



190 NAPLES: ITS SCENERY. 



CHAPTEE XIII. 

NOTES ON NAPLES — SCENERY VESUVIUS — POMPEII NEAPOLITAN PEOPLE. 

CAUSES OF THEIB LOW CONDITION. 

The Bay of Naples will not disappoint the expectations of the 
most imaginative of the tribe of wanderers. Distant mountain 
peaks tipped with snow rising in the clear intensely blue sky, 
are encircled by the deep green forests, below which bright pas- 
ture and grass fields join to a rich network over the face of the 
country of vineyards, orchards, olive and orange groves, hamlets, 
towns, villas, terraces, white walls, and a dazzling confusion of 
the works of nature and of man. This splendid hill-skirting 
terminates in sea-cliffs, some black, some yellow, some bare, some 
bending over the waves under the tangled luxuriance of southern 
vegetation. High over all, the graceful outline of Vesuvius 
loses itself in the column of smoke which rises, and spreads in 
the heavens, concentrating the innumerable details of the vast 
scene into one harmonious glorious whole. But this magniticence 
of nature must be seen : it cannot be described. It is seen to 
most advantage from the sea. On shore you want a suitable 
foreground. You are shut in between white walls on a dusty 
road, or stand upon terraces with vineyards and orchards, row 
behind row, all around you ; and although these may please at a 
great distance, they have but a patchy, dotty effect near the eye, 
as the foreground of scenery. The poet-painter would scarcely 
select such objects for the foreground of his landscape. They are 
too artificial. The great clearness of the Italian atmosphere, 
the absence of mist, vapour, or exhalation partially hiding, par- 
tially showing distant objects, and thus giving the mind 
23lay upon them, is also against the picturesque effect of this 
scenery in general. All is distinctly seen. There is no delu- 
sion, or rather there is the delusion that distances appear 
smaller, and elevations lower than they actually are. In our 
northern scenery, from the vapour in the atmosphere, the refrac- 
tion of the rays from a distant mountain makes it visually, and 
to the sense of sight positively higher, than the actual measure- 
ment confirms : and where mist and cloud partially hide the 
mountain, there is a mental refraction magnifying the unseem 



# VESUVIUS. 191 

, as well as a visual refraction enlarging the seen. It is this dif- 
ference of the medium through which a country is viewed, and 
which, in our cloudy atmosphere, brings our own imaginations 

' to act on objects of mountain scenery, that makes the traveller 
from the north doubt whether the mountains he sees so clearly 
and minutely in the south, are really so much higher than those 
he has been accustomed to see half hid in mist and vapour. 

Vesuvius is an isolated mountain about three miles from the 
sea, of an elevation of 3,792 feet. An American would call it 
an elegant mountain, and no English word can better express its 
character, so graceful are the flowing outlines of its slopes from 
the base to the summit, on every side. Vesuvius has been pro- 

| digiously higher than it now is, for the Monte Somma, a peak 
about 800 yards north of the present cone, and Ottaiana on the 
south, are apparently peaks remaining of the circumference of 
the base of some vast ancient cone. These three remaining 
peaks, of which Monte Somma is the highest, belong to one 
mountain base, although divided above by chasms of the vast 
extinct crater, and by ravines below, and the whole mountain 
mass is a single independent elevation on a vast plain, and un- 
connected with the Appenines. To ascend Vesuvius is no very 
difficult feat. The stranger is beset with guides waiting at 
Portici with their mules and asses, and like watermen at the 
Tower stairs, clamorous for a fare, and so violent in their ges- 
ticulations, that the traveller might suppose they were going to 
roast him at the volcano, and were quarrelling about their shares 
of the meat. But it is the custom of these people to scream at 
the top of their voices in ordinary conversation, and to use their 
hands and arms, as well as their tongues, as explanatory organs. 
In fact, no guide is necessary, there being a regular footpath, and 
the shape of the ground, to lead any one accustomed to hills, 
and the footpath is well frequented at all hours. You ride up to 
the hermitage, a house of two stories high, like an old Highland 
manse, about half-way up, or about an hour and a quarter's walk 
from the beginning of the ascent. It is situated on the dividing 
ridge between the ravine through which the lava of the ancient 
crater of Monte Somma has flowed, and that through which the 
lava of the present crater, in its recent eruptions, has partly taken 
its course. It is a ridge formed apparently by the deposition of 
stones and ashes from the volcano, upon a natural feature of the 
ground rock of the mountain. The hermitage is at the end of 
the cultivated ground on the side of Vesuvius. Above it, all is 



192 Vesuvius. t 

lava or scorise, and some of this rubbish was still so hot, that lava 
ejected eight months before ignited dry leaves thrust into its 
crevices. At this hermitage you may get hermit's fare for your 
money, a bottle of good wine and an omelette : and ladies are 
carried to the summit from hence in about an hour and a half, 
in a sort of sedan-chair, with about as much fatigue and danger, 
as in being sedanned on a frosty night from the lowest to the 
highest of the fashionable streets of the city of Bath. 

Is there any reason for supposing that the fire-seat, the focus 
of this volcano, is situated far below the level of the plain on 
which the mountain stands, and is not contained altogether, or 
principally, within the walls of the mountain itself ? Travellers 
and geologists are very apt to run poetical when they fall in with 
burning mountains. They tell us that this and the other great 
volcanoes of the world are vents of a great central fire in the 
interior of our globe. How does this vast central fire burn 
without known communications with atmospheric air or water % 
At what depth below the crust of the earth is it in activity 1 
In the last eruption of Vesuvius, in 1839, the elevation in the 
air to which luminous matter, stones, or ashes were thrown, w&<* 
estimated or guessed by intelligent observers to be about one 
half of the apparent height of the mountain. In the great 
eruption of the 8th of August, 1779, the height of the column of 
flame or ignited matter, was estimated at one and a half the 
height of the mountain, or 1800 yards : and Sir William Ham- 
ilton even reckons it to have been 3,600 yards, or above two 
miles high. « Stones, as large as hogsheads, are stated by the 
Abbe de la Torre to have been projected to the elevation of 400 
yards. In 1775, a mass of lava of 120 cubic feet is stated by 
de Bottis to have been projected to an elevation from which he 
reckoned the descent to have occupied nine seconds of time. This 
fact would also give an elevation of about 400 yards. Now tl^e 
projecting force cannot have been working at any immense distance 
below, such as the semidiameter of the earth, nor at any consi- 
derable portion of it, because gravity and atmospheric resistance 
would oppose the elevation of huge masses of stone through such 
a space. No solid masses of matter, such as stones, rocks, lava, 
could be projected entire and compact, against the column of air 
through such a distance ; but would come to the surface of the 
earth from such a depth, be the crust over this central focus ever 
so thin, in a liquid or gaseous state. The points of ejection, also, 
the vents of a central fire-action, would naturally be always and 



Vesuvius. 193 

invariably in the points of least resistance ; that is, in the lowest 
plains, not in the points of greatest resistance, the summits of 
high and weighty mountains resting on the plains. The prodi- 
gious power of volcanic agency on and above the surface of the 
earth, is the strongest proof that the focus of that power is at no 
immense distance below its visible energy. The supposed com- 
munications between Vesuvius and Etna, Stromboli, Hecla, or 
even the Solfaterra, are not supported by historical facts of any 
correspondence between their eruptions. The communication^ 
even of this volcanic focus with the sea, at three miles' distance, 
is very doubtful, and rests only upon the ejection of torrents of- 
water in one or two of the recorded eruptions : but besides the: 
explanation of rainwater accumulating in the hollow of the crater, 
and at one period forming in it a small pond or lake, the gases 
evolved in the combustion within the crater might, by their 
combination in the air, produce water. Water from the sea 
passing through such a focus of fire^ would undoubtedly be 
ejected in a gaseous state. 

The most instructive appearance to the traveller who carries 
the ordinary smattering of geological theory with him is, that the 
ashes, cinders, dust, stones, whether loose, or indurated and 
cemented by pressure, heat, or other causes, into tuffa rock more 
or less compact— in short, all ejected matter from the volcano 
that is not ejected in a liquid state like lava, is deposited in a 
distinct order or stratification. The larger particles are in one 
regular bed, above which is another bed of finer, above that 
another and another of finer and finer particles, each bed lying 
with a certain character of regularity above the other, as in water 
depositions ; and then, comes another bed or layer of rougher, 
larger particles, and a similar gradation of finer regularly above 
it. Where the tuffa rock is laid bare in section, as by the road 
leading to the hermitage, and also in the rocks about Naples 
and in the excavations at Pompeii, this stratified tendency of the 
ejected matter is to be seen. When the matter — dust, ashes, fine 
particles, stones — is ejected, the densest falls first to the ground, is 
the first deposited from the atmosphere, exactly as if water 
instead of air had been the medium in which the parti- 
cles had been suspended. Then follows bed after bed, each 
in succession, according to the size or gravity of its particles. 
A new ejection of the same eruption follows with the same 
succession from coarse to fine particles, deposited upon the 
former deposi tion. If this tendency to stratification in the 

o 



194 POMPEII. 

ejected matter of volcanic agency be confirmed by more extensive 
observation, it would explain in a satisfactory way many puzzling 
geological appearances — such as the stratified formation of rocks 
composed of crystalline or chemically aggregated particles, the 
veins or bands of rough pebbles in old red sandstone, the stripes 
alternating in almost all rocks. If geologists exclude all regu- 
larity from volcanic agency, and confine stratification to aqueous 
deposition, how many deluges must they take to account for a 
striped pebble, or a sandstone with bands or beds running 
through it at every three or four inches, or lamellated structure 
of any kind ? And how would they account for the formation 
of gneiss with its character of regularity in the arrangement of 
its particles 1 The striated arrangement of its constituent parti- 
cles, and the lamellated structure and stratified formation of rock 
of crystalline or chemically aggregated particles may all be ex- 
plained without the clumsy supposition of some unknown fluid 
in which these particles were suspended, and from which they 
were mechanically deposited, by taking them as they naturally 
lie after beiDg ejected by a volcano, and deposited in succession 
according to their gravity ; and supposing them welded or partly 
fused together by the continuance or renewal of the heat. The air 
as well as water has been a medium in forming the mechanically 
deposited stratified rocks, and it is instructive to see, from what 
goes on at eruptions of this volcano, that many appearances 
ascribed to aqueous, belong in reality also to volcanic agency, 
and may be simply explained by similar processes going on here 
according to the usual law of gravity. 

Pompeii, the victim of the mountain, loses much of its interest 
from the removal to the museum at Naples of every article that 
could be removed. All the ancient utensils, household goods, 
and personal ornaments of the inhabitants, had an interest upon 
the very spot where they were last used and handled by their 
owners eighteen centuries ago, which is lost under glass cases, 
in modern show-rooms, with a prattling cicerone in black silk 
Name-me-nots, showing them off. What remains at Pompeii 
are pillars of brick stuccoed over, walls stuccoed, and embellished 
with some rude paintings and ornaments in fresco on the plaster, 
done mostly with red ochre, and some mosaic or tesselated work 
in marble on the floor, representing, in black and white inlaid 
stones, ill-drawn figures of animals, and such ornaments. The 
interior arrangement of the houses is more interesting than any- 
thing remaining in situ at Pompeii. It gives us some idea of the 



POMPEII. 195 

amount, or rather of the want of physical civilisation, of domestic 
comfort, and of luxury in the ordinary dwellings of the ancients. 
The streets of Pompeii have been narrow lanes ill-paved, aiid ill 
kept, the ruts worn by the cart-wheels in the bare rock appear- 
ing in the street ; and from these ruts being single, it is to be 
presumed that there was little continuous traffic of carts in op- 
posite directions, no lines of going and coming carts ; but, as is 
the case now in small Italian towns, the carts have come in from 
the country in the morning, and gone out in the evening in the 
same ruts in which they arrived. The houses have been generally 
low, without upstair rooms, and constructed generally on one plan. 
An outside wall encloses a square or oblong space, and, except 
the street door, is without opening to the outside for light or air. 
The roof has run with a slight slope from this outside dead wall 
to an inner wall parallel to it, which determined the breadth of 
the apartments. A row of pillars connected with each other by 
round arches, or by beams within this inner wall all round the 
open space, has supported the extremity of the roof on every side 
of the square open court, and has furnished a covered colonnade all 
round it. In the centre of this open court, which is in the best 
houses paved with marble in ornamental figures, has been a foun- 
tain, cistern, or receptacle for the rain water from the roofs ; and this 
open court appears to have been the drawing-room of the mansion, or 
its equivalent. The doors and windows of all the rooms have opened 
into the colonnade. The rooms are very small, about ten or twelve 
feet square, and have been dark and ill ventilated ; the windows, 
small openings, in general without glass, and for sake of shelter, 
made in the inside wall under the roof of the colonnade. The 
rooms have seldom communications with each other, but each 
opens into the covered gallery or colonnade. The best rooms are 
very small, have never been lined with wood, but merely plastered, 
and a rude ornament in ochre or red lead delineated on the plaster. 
Under this square of dwelling rooms has been a sunk floor, or 
square of vaults for cellars, and for lodging the slaves. In one of 
these was found the skeleton of a slave, who has had a bell fast- 
ened round his neck as we put a bell on a cow or sheep. In none 
of these mansions which, with masters and slaves, must have been 
very close, crowded, and inconvenient, is there any appearance of 
an outhouse, yard, privy, or detached building of any kind. The 
rooms have been merely used to retire to at night or in bad 
weather •; and the open. court in the centre, the covered colonnade 
running round it, and the bath-room have been the living places 



196 NEAPOLITAN PEOPLE : 

by day. *, A basking, Lazaroni, out-of-door life has been then, as 
now, the way of living in this part of Italy. 

The two distinct theatres, one for comedy and one for tragedy, 
and the amphitheatre with its seats for the different classes of 
spectators, its dens for the wild beasts, its issues for them, and 
for the prisoners condemned to be their victims — often prisoners 
of war, not criminals — are the most interesting remains of pub- 
lic structures in Pompeii. What a singular state of barbaric 
civilisation ! The whole population of a little town of six or 
eight thousand inhabitants, even the female sex, the vestals, spec- 
tators of such scenes of carnage ! All classes delighting in 
combats which have not had even the excitement of an equality 
between the parties, or of a doubtful issue, or of the possibility of 
the escape of the human combatant ! The sheer lust of blood- 
and-torture spectacle has been the only gratification of this re- 
fined people ! The scholarship of eighteen centuries has been 
extolling Roman virtue, Roman civilisation, Roman arts, arms, 
and institutions, until men are almost afraid to express the 
opinion, that the fine arts, sculpture, architecture, poetry, oratory, 
and all the rest of them, have been vastly over-rated as indica- 
tions or means of civilisation. The Romans, with all these, 
were in a more uncivilised social condition, had more of the 
tastes and habits of savage life in their highest and most refined 
period, than the inhabitants of New Zealand or of the Sandwich 
Islands, when we first discovered them. King Tommaha or Prince 
Pommaree was, in reality, much less of a savage, than Julius 
Caesar, or Augustus. 

Naples is a wonderful den of human animals. Eeggars, 
thieves, idlers are lounging at every corner ; ladies, monks, and 
military fill the streets. Where is the industry, or what the 
means and capital, that keeps this mass in life and movement ] 
It must be the concentration and expenditure of almost all the 
incomes and revenues of the kingdom, in this one spot, by no- 
bility, churchmen, and military. The bustle and hubbub in the 
Strada de Toledo is as great as in the most crowded street of 
London , but if you mark the stream of people, you see the crowd 
here consists of idlers hanging about, not of passengers hastening 
silently through on their affairs. All are talking at once at the 
highest pitch of their voices, and hands and arms are going as 
violently as tongues. In the secondary and poorer streets, people 
squatting on the stones in the sun or shade, sleeping, eating, 
working, hunting for vermin in their clothes, playing a favourite 



CAUSES OF THEIR LOW CONDITION. 197 

game of betting on the number of fingers held up (a Roman 
game, micare digitis), all out of doors, and all screaming like 
peacocks, give no favourable impression of their social condition. 

It is very striking to see in this finest soil and climate of 
Europe, this land overflowing with the richest productions for 
the use of man, the peasantry and townspeople of the labouring 
class clothed in sheep skins with the wool on, and in all respects 
worse clad, more wretched, and in food, lodging, property, sense 
of decency in their habits and ways of living, in a lower con- 
dition than the Laplander on the Norwegian fielde. Their fine 
climate is their curse. Many of the wants and desires which 
with us are the greatest stimulants to industry, and to all the 
virtues that spring from industry, are of little importance here 
in the catalogue of human gratifications. Life may be enjoyed 
without them ; and therefore the industry is wanting, along 
with the motives. The labouring man with us, who could ask, 
Why should I strive to get regular employment, or to earn high 
wages ? would be deemed insane. To buy meat, drink, fuel, 
lodging, clothing, and social respect among those of your own 
station, would be the reply. But in this country, the labouring 
man is no fool, who asks, what enjoyment or gratification can 
high wages gained by constant hard work, give me, equal to the 
enjoyment of doing nothing, of basking in the sun, or sleeping 
in the shade, doing nothing ] Fuel, clothing, lodging, food, are 
in this climate supplied almost spontaneously to man. Fuel to 
cook with, is all we need of firing, and even that may be dis- 
pensed with by most working people, for our food is sold to us 
ready cooked at the corner of every street. It would be waste 
and no comfort in it, to light a fire in our own dwellings. Cloth- 
ing we only want to cover our nakedness ; a ragged cloak, or 
sheepskin jacket three generations old, does that. Lodging is 
only necessary to sleep in, and shelter us from rain. A mere 
shed, like a coach-house, does that. We live out of doors. Ani- 
mal food is not necessary, where olive oil is so plentiful as to be 
used for frying all vegetable and farinaceous food, and assimilat- 
ing it as nutritious aliment to flesh meat. Olive oil, wine, Indian 
corn, flour, legumes, fruit, are to be got in exchange for our 
labour at vintage and harvest, during a few weeks when these 
crops require a great number of hands at once. Why should we 
labour every day ? This is the condition of all around us in our 
station ; why should we labour ? 

It is the case, that steady, regular, every-day industry is ac- 



198 



NEAPOLITAN PEOPLE : 



tually not requiredfor enabling these people to satisfy the few wants 
which the blessings of the climate, of the soil, and of the cheap 
nutriment of olive oil, Indian corn, small fish, and fruits leave them; 
and they only work by fits and starts. Lazaroni is rather a 
character, than a class of the people. They are all Lazaroni in 
their social condition, in the lounging about idle, and in a state 
almost of nudity, when not forced by want to look for a short 
1 job; and in their out-of-door way of living. It is in the nature 
of the products of the climate, that the demand for labour on 
the land is desultory — requiring great numbers of hands for 
short periods; and* consequently, the payments are made in 
portions of the material worked upon, not in regular wages. But 
this material includes those necessaries of life for which, in other 
climes, people must labour steadily, day after day. The amount 
of food here, in chestnuts, figs, fruit, legumes, cakes of Indian 
corn, various small fish, and in the nutriment of olive oil added 
to these otherwise unsubstantial articles of diet, surpasses all we 
understand by abundance in northern countries; and all these 
require but very little human labour for their production. Food 
for the idle, that is food requiring small and irregular applica- 
tion only of human labour, is abundant; and this is evident, 
from the way in which common work is carried on. Time and 
labour seem not worth saving in their estimation. The women 
are universally sauntering about, spinning, wool or flax with the 
distaff and spindle. A woman will spin as much yarn at her 
spinning wheel in an hour, as in a week with her distaff and 
spindle. But I doubt if a spinning wheel could be found in 
Naples. I have seen two men carrying between them, slung 
upon a pole on their shoulders, a common-sized paving stone. 
One of them could have transported six such stones in*a common 
wheelbarrow, with ease. Boats are manned with six or seven, 
or even ten men. A man and a boy, or at the utmost, two men, 
would be the crew of such a craft in any other country. I have 
seen two asses with a driver to each, and a padrone, or overseer, 
on horseback to attend them, employed in trailing into town 
two sticks with each ass, one on each side of the saddle, and the 
sticks positively of a size that one of the drivers might have 
carried the whole four. In every job, the padrone, the helper, 
the looker-on, the talker, and the listener, seem indispensable 
personages. The division of labour may be an evil as well as a 
good in society. It is an evil, if the time and labour saved by 
it be not applied to reproduction. It is an evil among these 



CAUSES OF THEIR LOW CONDITION. 199 



Lazaroni. Six men doing the work of two, merely multiply 
themselves and their idle habits by their division of labour. They 
do nothing with the time and labour they have gained by the 
division— if they have gained any by it— in their way of work- 
ing. This is a point not so thoroughly considered by our poli- 
tical economists as it should be. The saving of time and labour 
by machinery, or by a supplanting of labour by machinery, or by a 
division of labour, is not of itself of any value, nor is it adding to 
national wealth of itself, as our great political economists Adam 
Smith and M'Culloch teach us. It is only of value and adding 
to national wealth, if the time and labour saved be employed in 
other production. Steam, for instance, applied to pumping water 
out of mines, to moving machinery, and so on, adds to national 
wealth, only because the men and time employed in pumping or 
in moving hand-engines, are immediately employed in other 
analogous productive labour. But if they could not be employed, 
if any branch of industry, as, for instance, all husbandry labour, 
or all shoemaking, or all tailoring, could be executed by steam 
machinery, the nation, the community, would be no gainer, un- 
less the classes thrown out of work, and idle, can be, and are, 
employed and absorbed in some other kind of productive labour. 
One class only, the employers, would be gainers at the expense 
of another class; and unless that class can become productive in 
some other branch of industry, there is a loss, not a gain, to the 
nation, even by machinery. The division of labour here is the 
offspring of idleness, not of industry; and produces idleness, not 
industry. It is followed by no increased production. This 
evil, in the social condition of the people of Italy, is so closely 
connected with the nature of the soil and climate, that it may 
be doubted if the inhabitants of this part of the Italian penin- 
sula, ever were in any higher state of civilisation than they are in 
at this day. "What were the inhabitants of Pompeii, but a 
population of slaves cultivating the earth in chains, of Lazaroni 
basking in the sun, and of public functionaries and patricians 
of enormous wealth, to whom the Lazaroni were so formidable, 
that it was necessary to feed them and keep them in amusement 
and excitement by such shows and bloody spectacles as suited 
their half savage state % The mass of the people then, as now, 
have had no wants, but those which the soil, with desultory 
labour, could supply — no civilising desires for comforts and en- 
joyments, which industry only produces. 

It is characteristic here of the social condition, that all trades- 



200 NEAPOLITAN PEOPLE : 

men's work — shoemakers', tinsmiths', coppersmiths' work — is 
carried on out of doors, in the open air, amidst the gossip and 
bustle of the street passengers ; and all domestic business is done 
on the pavement, or in cellars, or vaults of coach-house-like 
dwellings, with a side open to the street, leaving the whole in- 
terior of their households exposed to view, and on]y shut in at 
night or in rainy weather, there being no windows to these dens. 
The sense or feeling of domestic privacy, or the tastes, civilised 
habits, and virtues connected with this feeling, cannot exist, 
where the whole family are separated from the view of the pas- 
sengers in the streets, even when in bed, only by a bit of mat 
hung up for the occasion. Whoever considers well the causes 
wdiick act on the social state of the Irish or Neapolitan, and the 
Swiss or French people in the same station of life, will find that 
the lodging of a population, the ordinary standard of house 
accommodation for the families of the lowest class, is very closely 
connected with their moral condition. The first step, perhaps, 
towards the imbuing the Irish people with the peaceful habits 
they are accused of wanting, would be giving them timber free 
of duty, for building their dwellings on a civilised standard of 
accommodation. 

The soil and climate which produce industry, produce the real 
crop on which man lives in well-being, civilisation, and comfort, 
and not the soil and climate which produce the objects of in- 
dustry : and viewing the world in large, industry will be found 
to thrive in every country, almost in the inverse ratio to the 
value and amount of its natural productions. . This is a just 
balance made by Providence in the lot of man. With their 
crops of wine, oil, silk, grain of every kind, and endless succession 
of fruits and of vegetable food, with their perpetual fine weather 
and easy life, what is the condition produced by these very ad- 
vantages, of the inhabitants of this earthly paradise % the poorest 
cottar on the poorest hill- side, in the north of Scotland, is a 
decently clothed, decently brought up, intellectual man, with, 
habits and ideas of a civilised being, compared to the half-naked, 
filthy, half-savage human animal wallowing in a sheep-skin with 
the wool on, and a tattered brown cloak, as his only body cover- 
ing, upon the marble steps of the palaces and churches of Italy. 
The soil and climate are not more superior in the neighbourhood 
of Naples to the soil and climate of the north of Europe, than 
the social and moral condition of ? the people is inferior. But 
moral causes, as well as physical, have their part in this low 



row. 

third more popul 

industry the i 

around them, i 
xjular clergy. If to I 

• nuns w'n i : !•• 7 17 in nu: 

have in all 7. withdrawn from I lits of in 

and earn I 1 all that mm strive i 

by industry, in other employment 

• working of a for 

umnunitj . 
ill be proportionably the r<- 

• proportionably in Presb] 
lericaJ b 
principle of what governments ami clergy may think r 
i people, ; of upon the principle that the people tl 

ill provide for their own religious instruct! 
to their want-, and r bility of using it. C 

blishment s 73 persons, which w 

i proportion to that of Naples — if that number v 
admirers of churc 

another Napl 

This Naple Europe. I would the 

pedlar who 

.all-tooth. not that the na: 

bo need such machinery — they use nloj 
Qg all of a row bed 
doors witli their heads in each other's laps in turns, and S 
tor — animated ideas -bui e English 

A man i; kin with 

ie, and - 

t" t he herds and Socks of bis 

lady, in all I 

I The English lady, in fact, d 
at home, and all h< r bl tshe ■. an! 
litig mong tl: 

half-nake<l. and all-alive people. The C 

l>e an earthly par the fdl, given up 

to t nt for an habitatd 



202 TRAVELLING IN ITALY, 



CHAPTER XIV. 

TRAVELLING IN ITALY. — VETTURINI. — CAPUA. TERRACINA.— PONTINE MARSHES, 

MAREMMA. THE APPROACH TO ROME. COLISEUM. 

There are three ways of travelling in Italy. One is to travel 
post, carrying all England along with you in your own English 
travelling carriage. With English books, English servants, 
English habits, and a foreign courier to cheat him, the English 
traveller may get over a good deal of country, and a good deal 
of money in this way, without the trouble of taking in any 
more ideas, or loading the memory with any more weighty 
matters than in seeing a diorama passing before his eyes. - An- 
other way is to travel in your own foreign carriage, with hired 
horses, with which the vetturino drives you to your journey's 
end, at the rate of five-and-twenty or thirty miles a day. 
There is often the inconvenience attending this way, that as the 
driver, at the end of his engagement, may have to ride his 
horses back without any return fare, which he would have if 
the carriages as well as the horses belonged to him, you are not 
much cheaper, and are vastly slower in your movements, than 
with post horses: and the owner, or vetturino, will scarcely 
come himself to ride back with his horses if he can put off any 
lad upon you to do the job. The third, and ordinary way of 
travelling for all ranks in the country, is by a voiturin, or 
vetturino, who has ,his own carriage and horses. They are a 
class of coach proprietors, many of them intelligent, respectable 
men, who drive a light carriage of their own that will hold four 
inside and two outside passengers, and with a pair of gaunt, 
bony horses. You engage the number of places you want, and 
the vetturino visits all the inns to find other travellers going the 
same road to fill up the empty places. There is, of course, con- 
siderable difference in the rates paid, even in the same carriage, 
for the same distance, as the vetturino will take any fare at last 
rather than none. It is necessary, also, to have a regular con- 
tract in writing, and to insure it by taking an earnest upon it 
— a piece of money from the vetturino, which is returned to him 
when he is fairly on the road; for in Italy it appears to be the 



THE VETTURINI. 203 

principle in all dealings between man and man — impose if 
am. The average expense, travelling in this v. 
sterling a day f6r each passenger: l>ut this includes your living 
on the road, that is. a dinner-breakfast — dinner as to the lair, 
Lut breakfast as to the hour, about ten or eleven — a good sup- 
per at eight or nine in the evening, and your bed. The wttu- 
rino alwa for the living, and the traveller is much 

better served, and more cheaply, than if he paid for him 
The vetturini form a class all over the Continent, know: 
each other, and have the innkeepers at their command, beca 
the inn which had the reputation of serving their passengers ill 
might as well be shut up. An English family travelling in 
their own carriage with four post horses, would not get the I 
beds, or the best fare at every Italian inn, if a known vetturino 
with his passengers came to the door at the same moment. 
The ordinary way of their travelling is, to start at four in the 
morning, and stop at nine or ten. They start again at two, and 
travel till six or seven, and in this way get on for weeks to- 
gether, at the rate of thirty miles a day. The old-fashioned ar- 
rangement of the vetturino undertaking for the lodging and 
feeding, as well as for the transporting of his passengers, is not, 
as our English tourists imagine, devised for the sake of saving 
them from being imposed upon by Italian innkeepers. It is a 
remnant of ancient manners from the ages of pilgrimages and 
crusaders, when bands of pious passengers from all parts of Chris- 
tendom contracted with conductors to lead them to Rome, and 
purvey for them out and home. It is at this day the best way 
for the traveller to see a foreign country. It takes him as 
over it as he can go with the advantage of seeing what is remark- 
able, and brings him into contact with people of the country, 
and travellers of all kinds and cla-> 

^Ye set out early in the morning from Naples by Vetturino, 
and got to Mola de Gaeta for the first night's quarters, stopping 
in the forenoon, for a few hours, at Capua. There kpu* 

is over a highly cultivated fertile plain. The most fertile land 
in Europe is probably hereabouts, in the plain watered by 
Volturno, because with the . Limate for vegetable pro- 

duction, the soil is a deep black, alluvial, garden mould, which, 
in any climate, would be rich land; and from its iiat BUrfa 
and low level, it retains the necessary moisture, or receives it 
easily by irrigation. The gods, s ays PolybiuSj might dispute the 
possession of such a delicious plain, as that of Capua. Yet in 



204 TRAVELLING TS ITALY. 

this earthly paradise, the people are not merely in rags and 
wretchedness ; it is difficult even to conceive humanity in so low 
a condition, as you see it in here. In the streets of Capua, you 
see animals which you can scarcely acknowledge to be human 
beings. The Esquimaux has a covering for his body, which, 
even in his rude state, shows a sense of decency, as well as the 
mere feeling of cold — a sense of ornament even, may be traced 
in his seal-skin garment. But here the sense of decency, even in 
the female animal of the human species, is apparently little higher 
than among the irrational creatures. How low bad govern- 
ment may reduce the civilisation of a country, is impressively 
brought out here. Come to Capua, all ye conservatives of ex- 
isting institutions, all ye defenders of things as they are, all ye 
good, pious, moral gentlemen of England, who look with aver- 
sion on every reform, with horror on every social change, come 
to Capua, and see the working of your principle of conservatism. 
It is not the wish certainly of the Neapolitan government, to 
have its subjects in a low and miserable condition; but it is the 
fear of change, our own principle of conservatism — which shuns 
all improvement; and where society is not improving, it is retro- 
grading. There is no stand still in human affairs. 

From Mola de Gaeta, where a branch of low hills from the 
Appenine chain approaches the coast, we travelled next day to 
Terracina, passing through the beautiful scenery around the 
little towns of Itri and Fondi. Fondi is more celebrated for 
the attempt, in 1534, of Hayraddin Barbarossa with a Turkish 
squadron to carry off, for the seraglio, the beautiful Countess 
Julia de Gonzagua, than for the eloquence or logic of Thomas 
d' Aquinas. Yet here he taught theology. He was a great man 
in his day, and for generations after his day : — for ideas never 
die, and his may still be influencing theological and metaphysi- 
cal science. 

In this Italian atmosphere, there is a transparency in the sha- 
dows seldom seen in our climate in our rural scenery. With us, all 
that is in shade is indistinctly made out. The shadows in our 
landscape paintings and drawings, are often laid in muddy, be- 
cause, in fact, they often are so in nature — and it is not every 
painter who is a poet of the brush; who can select, and avoid, or 
take what nature offers. Copying nature literatim, is not painting 
well. Here objects, even in the deepest shadow of a mountain, are 
very distinct, both in outline and colour, although kept down and 
subdued by the general shade : and this atmospheric peculiarity 



in the real 

painting ithing different from I in which 

of other c 
objects under the 

headquarters here, I came upon a lit mill wit 

perpendicular shaft turned round by the rill i 
upon van* a inserted obliquely in it t<» 
mill of the Scandinavian peasant, and still found in the Bhetl 

islands, ;m.l some of the y little | 

had been made by the ancients in the useful arjts, at die I 
when many of the fine A 

i mill is a machine which, it' it ever had existed iii a country, 
could never b The Romans b 

ground their corn in hand, or cattle mills, or mi'L i by 

slave labour, or in such rude machines as this water mill, I 
:l architecture and sculpti; 

equalled. Cicero's bread was made of flour ground 
in such a rude imperfect machine ! They had neither 
their feet, nor shirts to their backs, when t<> \ lease the eye they 
had statues and magnificent buildings which are still ti, 

• u of tiic world. The woollen tunic next the skin ^ 
while it lasted, the woollen toga, coarse and heavy as a b 
ami the raw wool much less perfectly cleaned of its animal oil 
than a horserug, must have rendered the windward side of 

nan gentleman, with all his luxury, considerably i. 
agreeable on a sunshine d 

On leaving Terraoina, we come upon the Ponti! 
The Roman Maremma, or Campag aids from the . 

of Tuscany, to the Neapolitan frontier, and from the f»ot of 
the Appenines to th . indudin 

its widest sc is all more or ]■ ltliy, or 

subject to malaria, but is nut all marshy. The 

ooataary, 
than too much moisture, the ditches holdu 

d the ponds, and • for 

le, artificial. The Pontine 

tea in length along the 

l( ivated or inhabi 

The whole marshy surface in this 

about 5o,U00 English acres. On the south this ; 



206 PONTINE MAKSHES. 

by the sea, or by salt water lagunes ; on tlie east, by the high 
grounds and shore at Terracina ; on the north, by the high 
grounds about Yelletri ; and on the west, by the plains of Cis- 
terno. This marsh is formed by the rivers Amasino, Uffente, 
Cavatella, Tippin, Ninfo, and other mountain streams, which are 
the drainage of a large amphitheatre of country, but have no 
sufficient outlet, nor sufficient descent to carry off the waters 
they bring down. In the time of the Romans, great works, 
among others the canal by which Horace travelled, and the 
Appian way itself, were constructed for draining, and giving 
access to this tract ; and although it was so far rendered habi- 
table, that Pliny says there were three-and- twenty towns in, or 
round this district, the same author still speaks of it as a lake, 
or marsh, of which the exhalations were considered noxious as far 
as Home. The draining of this marsh has often been attempted 
and abandoned in later times. The blame of the unsuccessful 
attempts at drainage, is always thrown by travellers upon the 
papal government. Bad enough the government may be, and 
like all governments, good or bad, it must put up with more 
than its own fair share of all that does not succeed : but the 
popes in reality, have not been so very inert in attempting to 
recover this land. Martin Y., in the beginning of the 15th cen- 
tury, constructed a drain, the Rio Martino, on such a scale that 
it has been sometimes ascribed to the ancient Romans. His 
death, in 1431, interrupted this work ; but in each succeeding 
century, in almost each pontificate, considerable efforts at drainage 
have been made. But to drain an extensive area of flooded marsh 
land on a level with the sea, or with very little fall, and receiving 
the water of a very extensive amphitheatre of high grounds, and 
hills, without any lower level to drain it off into, would puzzle 
the most Protestant of governments. The Mediterranean Sea, be 
it remembered, has no rise and fall, no ebb-tide giving a drainage 
of several feet of level for half of the twenty-four hours, as on our 
no-popery shores of Kent, Lincolnshire, or Holland. After lead- 
ing the inland waters by canal to the sea side, there is, after all, 
no outlet or escape for them. This impediment to drainage on 
all the coasts of the Mediterranean, is insurmountable, and from 
century to century is necessarily increasing. Land is forming, 
and gaining upon the sea, by the diluvium of the rivers, and the 
accumulation of vegetable matter on it ; but such low tracts 
never can have been healthy, never can be made so, and must every 
century, as the marshy surface extends- itself, be growing less and 



TRAVELLING IN ITALY 207 

'•vilh 
shaj - which show | 

remma al 

in tl. Bat the agricultural \ n of 

the in terril un- 

der a dity 

in no higher i q than th i of the 

day. Tl; F human life in this cl 

only bter of pr 

with ', or ma I :' no 

more iin: than the tear and wear of horses and cattle in 

any of our agricultural m -a deduction 

the gross \alue of i be allowed for in the calcnlat 

The aqueduct mall, thickly 

Sprinkled over this waste and uninhabited Maremma, indicate no 
greater salubrity of the air in forme but only a greater 

ird of human life, nor | any great resident free popula- 

tion. 

The fixed inhabitants of the whole district called Maremma 
do not now exceed, it is said, 16,000 souls, as, owing to the un- 
healthiuess, or malaria, few places in it are habitabl 
round ; but freni 25,000 to 30,000 people come down from the 
high grounds, the Abruzzi and the Sabine hills, to lay down the 
crops and to nap them. The unhealth rated by this 

kind of I y life of the cultivators. When there is work 

to be done in this flat unwholesome country, they leave the 
on the high ground to pass a few weeks or months in it, 
and wood being i oe, as the Maremn. 

- lodge on the ground in temporary straw or reed huts, like 
pe, put up in the fields in which they are work- 
ing; with a fe 3 or hurdles to support the straw or re- 
and into these huts the labourer crawl heat 
of da leepe on the 1 U. Fevi ae would be 
inmates of such a : in any climate. This migratory life, 
also, is unfavourable to the mora well as to the hi 
and indu le. A shifting population is alwaj 
a low m lition, because the influence of public opinion 
upon private conduct is lost, where the individual 
anl ad influences which neighbours 
and fries ch other inal r ion- 
This appears to I demoralising influence in I 
dition of the peasantry or Libouri:. in this part of Italy, 



208 PONTINE MARSHES. 

and the true cause of the banditti life resorted to sometimes by 
people, who in general are found to be not the fixed inhabitants 
but the migrating wanderers about the Maremma. The little 
towns, also, in which the people live when not employed in the 
Maremma — viz. Cisterno, Gensano, Velletri, Albano, and many 
others, furnish very unwholesome lodging to the lower, and even 
the middle classes. The inhabitants occupy ill-ventilated cellars, 
or coach-houses on the ground floors of the better classes, or of 
ruinous decaying buildings not fully inhabited. A perpetual 
malaria must exist in these damp small dungeons, without ven- 
tilation, light, cleanliness, or any domestic convenience. The 
cooking goes on just within the door, which must be left ajar 
for receiving light, and letting out the smoke, it being door, 
window, and chimney, in most of the houses of the labouring 
class in these little towns. The beds are in the interior of the 
den, concealed by a bit of curtain, or more usually by wine 
casks, jars, or such household goods, piled up before them. In 
the far end twinkles a little lamp, night and day, before a print 
of the Virgin. This adoption by the .Romish church of the del 
penates of the ancients is general over Italy. Ground these 
cellars, or ground-floor rooms, is an accumulation of old rubbish 
of former edifices, from which the exhalations rn such a climate 
must be very unwholesome. The countiy never could have been 
healthy ; and the mode of living could not be less favourable to 
the health of the people. From Naples to Rome you do not see 
one individual in a state of robust health. The whole population 
is of a sickly appearance, like convalescents from fever, or ague, 
sauntering about their hospital grounds. 

The land all the way from Naples to Rome is held in large 
estates, let out to metayer tenants who provide the labour, and 
the landlord the land, stock, and utensils , and the produce is 
divided between the parties, or it is feued in perpetuity, or for 
long periods, at fixed and heavy feu rents in kind. From the 
little improvement, or alteration for ages, in the modes of hus- 
bandry, or markets in Italy, the difference in the value of old 
feu duties and their present value, and between the produce of 
the same land now and formerly, is not so great as with us in 
Scotland. The dominium nobile, and the dominium utile, are 
two distinct interests in the land here as with us; but the former 
has not become a mere illusory payment for the land compared 
to its present value ; but is still a real rent of estates, and re- 
taining all its original proportion to the value of the land. 



III all tin 

ing the oonditioD of I I all 
their ach [t is that, i 

the j ttle 

felt, inde but 
still daily cold, 
labour is interrupted I 

tended in doors* and i re; but 

then her winter as Ear ommer-win- 

ter, in which, for three or four months work of man 

and inded by heat, and much d than 

it ever i by oold in our climate. All i led 
for in d in winter. Fodder must be cut and water 

led to them. From extreme cold, man and 

lief in hard work ; but from overwhelming heal 

but bodily inaction. All water p nimal po-. 

ia interrupted by it, and many arts and manufaet .not, 

lently, be carried on in these southern eli: 
enormous waste of labour and life. This summer-win 
is the season of malaria, producing fevers among working 
exposed to the heat and dews, far more generally, and dangerously, 
than epidemic diseases in our climate. 

From no we got to Rome easily in a day, the t 

from ping at Albano to breakfast Alb. 

da on high ground, from which the descent into tfa 
pl.t in of the Campagna is very impressive. This plain of the 
Campagna, boundless to the eye, is without trees, or houses, or 
ponds, or running waters, but is one vast sheet of dry, fine } 
tore grass, thickly studded with sh remains of buildn 

The city of B by herself in the midst of this green, y.-t 

uninhabited, uncultivated, joj rt. Rome Bits here in 

lonely grandeur on her plain — of what B old 

in the midst of the world. The approach to by this 

Appian way has great moral gran 

68 of am ;eient wa] 

built clu i of rub: 

■ of dem . monum. 

with inscriptions not I fountains not running, and 

ran, lucts for 

I in all di I plain- I by 

i, yet covered with 1\ .. human | 

. ns oi an extinct | 



210 ROME. 

of human industry on this lifeless sea of grass. The lark sing- 
ing in the sky, and a solitary shepherd and his dog in the dis- 
tant horizon, are all of living objects that strike ear or eye. 
You reach the gates of Rome through the silence and solitude of 
the grave. Within it, all is as silent, solemn, and destitute of 
movement as without. A clerical-looking soldier on guard, a 
half-asleep functionary of the custom-house, a few labourers 
working at remarkably slow time on the repair of the causeway, 
are all the concourse at the gate of the mistress of the world. 
You pass the gate, are within her walls, and are still in the coun- 
try, with fields, gardens, and vineyards on each hand. Roads 
bounded by white walls on each side, a crucifix at every turn of 
the road, and in the distance a monk or a beggar crossing it, 
are all that, for nearly a mile within this gate, remind you that 
here is Rome. But our road becomes a street at last, with 
houses, palaces, churches, ruins, temples, triumphal arches, sta- 
tues, fountains, priests, monks, soldiers, people, shops, carriages, 
bustle, and business. 

We found some difficulty in lodging ourselves, as all the inns 
and lodging-houses are occupied on account of the approaching 
holy week of Easter, which is celebrated with great pomp by 
the Catholic Church. By going, however, a little beyond the 
circle within which strangers generally herd, we got very good 
lodging in the Yia delle Quatre Fontane, at a moderate rate of 
two piastres a day — moderate for Rome at this particular 
season. It is reckoned that the population of Rome is increased 
by 30,000 strangers generally during the holy week. This es- 
timate is probably an exaggeration in modern times, even if it 
include the inhabitants of the neighbouring towns, villages, and 
country — the pilgrims of a day on foot, in carts, or in chaises, 
who come for a forenoon, and not strictly the strangers. The 
number of the latter is no doubt considerable; but the places of 
resort being the same for all strangers — the galleries and an- 
tiquities, and frequented at certain hours — one sees the whole 
body of foreigners, more than in other cities, at one time, and 
is apt to over-estimate their numbers. There are few or no 
diligences running daily between Rome and other distant cities: 
and taking the steam-vessels which stop at Civita Yecchia, the 
voiturins, and the post-horses at the different stations near 
Rome, into consideration, you see no means of conveying 30,000 
travellers and their luggage to and fro, in any moderate space 
of time — nor one tenth of that number — to the holy week. 



BOKK 211 

Artists, forei J on bn nobility, with a 

few of ill- Englisl 

li>li travellers «>t' the nondescript 

Is of - 1 1 liah 

.'■ M I dealer in 
a a perpe tu al stream of English running through 
the place. 

A valet-de-place, t' the 

Romans who makes his bow I I recommends himseli 

ide to all that is remarkable in Ron tncs 

v. He •*. provided he 

od provided you never take him with yuu. If you 
do, you are the party fairly entitled to be paid for th >rk ; 

for you have the fatigue of listening to a rigmarole of n. 
phrases that would tire the patient i ijr of his marble 

But consult him in the morning before you sally forth, 
as a kind of two-legged diet i- t all the information y«»u 

can out of him about what you intend to see, and the way to it; 
pluck him and leave him at home, and the goose is worth his 
price. 

The Coliseum, of all that Rome encloses, should be seen alone, 
and by moonlight. No other human monument speaks so stro: 
to the moral sense of man. The deep and lorn se of t lie 

moonlight hour within its vast walls, is broken only by the chirp- 
ing of the solitary cricket in the grass of that arenas which has 
randed with the shrieks of human beings, the wild veils of 
ferocious beasts tearing them, and the acclamations of eighty 
thousand spectators rejoicing in the butchery. This is the 
triumph of the Christian religion. This immense edifice is co- 
with Christianity, and is r ; history. Eighteen centuries 

ago, the most civilised people on the fece of the earth 

■huge pile for ml blood] -known 

tribe on die face of the earth at the present da] 
so d< of humanity, feeling for others, and discrimination 

of right and wn.: The N< a Zealan 

or tin- Cherokee of the present day. stands higher as a mood h 

imbued with feelings of humanity, and of duty to his fellow men, 

than the citizen of ancient Koine in his m< 1> 

i no i m prov em ent in the social condition of man I I> man not 

in a progressive state as a moral and intellectual being I We may 

rather ask, if human nature itself has not changed during these 

eighteen centuries ; and if we really belong to the saine species 



212 ROME. 

of beings, as the men who, eighteen centuries ago, laid those 
stones upon each other, for the uses for which this immense 
fabric was erected. These stones are still sharply square. Man 
has changed more than his works. How little appear all the 
squabbles between church and church, between Catholic and Pro- 
testant, Lutheran and Presbyterian, sect and sect, opinion and 
opinion, when we consider this sublime result of Christianity, as 
a whole, amidst these walls which witnessed its origin, its pro- 
gress, and are now bearing testimony to its humanising influences 
on the condition of man ! Details vanish before the sublime 
result. Time itself seems to vanish amidst the works of man 
standing for eighteen centuries, uninjured but by his own hands. 
What are eighteen centuries in the history of the human race ? 
— a span of time too short to reduce their buildings to dust, 
yet long enough to elevate their physical and moral condition 
from the deepest barbarism, ignorance, and wickedness, to civili- 
sation, knowledge, and religion ; to raise them morally and 
intellectually to a new species of beings. The changes of eighteen 
centuries are enclosed within these grey walls of the Flavian 
amphitheatre. The mind involuntarily runs back over the foot- 
steps of time, to consider what other events, influential on the 
condition of man, these walls have witnessed. Is it an unrea- 
sonably extended view, here amidst the remains of their power, 
civilisation, and barbarity of man, eighteen hundred years ago, to 
consider causes which first appeared in the world about three 
centuries back, as only now beginning to act powerfully and 
visibly in the affairs of society ] The diffusion of knowledge and 
mental power by the art of printing, of religious inquiry by the 
Reformation, of new and artificial tastes and wants which sprung 
up suddenly and simultaneously in Europe, on the discovery of 
America and the navigation to the East, and which are now more 
influential among men, as motives of action and industry, than 
the natural wants connected with the support of life — for such 
are the acquired tastes for objects unknown in former times, as 
tobacco, coffee, sugar, distilled liquor, which now set in motion 
more of human activity than the Roman power ever wielded, or 
all the monarchs of Europe in the present day can command — 
the introduction of a new article of food in the potato, of,a new 
clothing material in cotton, of a new power for human use in 
steam, are causes which, if we reflect on their obscure, and on- 
observed origin and first progress, and their subsequent vast 
development and influence on the human race in this age, we 



213 

must regard i ond worlds parallel and equivi 

to those deemed miraculous in the physical. These mig] I 
must workout might] condition of man* It 

is absurd, it is almost impious, to h moral 

wonders havt died into option for do purpose— and I 

the social arrangements constructed when the not in 

ginning to influenoe human affi 
adapted to the future social condition of man, and should 
pressed down upon it as offil parity and suitable mould. 

It is an error not dissimil the first Jewish o 

to Christianity, who witnessed the not more astonishing mirs 
in the physical wor] 1. and supposed t! 

lined within the circumcision and the law. The whole 
civilised society ite of transition. The laws, institu- 

tions, the very ideas belonging to those ages of darkness and 
barbarism which followed the downfall of the Roman empire, are 
silently hut rapidly passing away, and a new state of society is 
forming itself A day will arrive in the progress of the human 
race, when every record or trace of our existing establishmi 
will be regarded with the same curiosity with which • 

of the Roman power before its decline. The feudal 
arrangements of society which sprung up and overspread its ruins, 
are in their turn decaying, and giving place to other ideas and 
principles : and in this slow but certain succession of one 
of human affairs to another, like the sue rmations ofn 

eologicai science, the philosopher and the trulj nan 

hail in every change an evident amelioration of the moral and 
physical condition of mankind, a wonderful advance in ; 
morality, good government, and wellbeing ; and 1 
bigots in legislation and religion- forms the inconsistent and 
fruitless attempt to hold bach this mighty movement of dii 
and beneficent will for the improvement of the moral and phy- 
sical condition of its creatures. These walls of the Flavian 
amphitheatre may witness in the I . \teen centuries— and 

no natural cause seems to forbid the idea of their enduring 

long — changes and improvements in the state of human 
as great which have consigned them in our times to 

lizard and the owl. 



-11 CATHEDRAL OF ST. PETES. 



CHAPTEE XV. 

NOTES ON ST. PETER'S. — ON ROME. POPULATION. POSITION. CAUSES OF 

THE RISE OF ROME. ORIGIN OF RIGHTS OF PROPERTY. — CIVILISATION OF 

ANCIENT ROME. 

Great is my veneration for the opinions of all constituted au- 
thorities — from the pope's to the kirk-session officer's — from the 
lord of session's to the town-crier's — and doubly great for the 
opinions of the self-constituted authorities in the realms of litera- 
ture and taste. In the courts of these authorities, animosity, 
virulence, and bad feeling, rise high, just in proportion to the 
smallness and unimportance of the matters in question. With 
fear and trembling, therefore, I venture to propound my own 
secret heresy in a small matter of taste, and to avow that St, 
Peter's, the great cathedral of St. Peter, appears tome a great 
architectural failure. The parts are magnificent, and the whole 
of no effect, by reason of the magnificence of the parts. They 
divide the effect, distract the attention of the spectator, and 
prevent any adequate impression from the first view of the struc- 
ture, so vast as a whole. The spectator only views it piecemeal, 
not as one mass. AVe all know that St. Paul's, with its dome, 
could stand inside of St. Peter's ; yet the impression of St. 
Paul's on the spectator is so much greater, that it is with diffi- 
culty, and upon consideration and comparison only, that he 
admits the dimensions of the fabric, and especially of the dome, 
to be so greatly inferior to St. Peter's ; and he finds the dome of 
St. Paul's far more impressive and grand than that of St. Peter's, 
both in the near and in the distant view, both inside and out- 
side. The reason I imagine to be, that the dome of St. Paul's 
is simple, without accompaniment ; the spectator sees it, and it 
alone ; and receives its full impression undisturbed, without, by 
any superfluity of parts, or within, by any profusion of ornament. 
St. Peter's, again, is overloaded in the exterior by so many ac- 
companiments of pillars, colonnades, and ornaments, that the 
mind receives no undivided impression from it as a whole. The 
inside, with its silk hangings, brilliant paintings, polished marble 
pillars, statues, gold and silver altar ornaments, is like a peep 



All if 

the eye nor the mind H in as i 

detail, ami. from the multiplicity and splendour of 1 1. i itli 

a kind of painfLl distraction. JTou §i nd under the 

Paul's with an undivided feeling of aw •. Y 

St. Peter's b i are led many other 

obj( and when you do, it is from 

a immediate imj 
you arrive at the conclusion, that it m Mid snb- 

lime; ami that you ought tu feel it- grandeur, but somehow 
don't. 

important principle in the fine 
position, is involved in this superior ei I by the in- 

ferior structure of St. Paul's in consequence of the simplt< 
unobtrusivenese of it- accompaniments or pa 

I have read or heard somewhere, that arch unit that 

St. J' hi than it is at first sight; but that thj 

. lection, as this impression of its small pro- 

duced by the just and perfect proportion of all its parts. I 
with all submission to arc' 

Architecture, in common with sculpture and painting, addre 
itself to the mind through the sense of sight, and its end ami 
objeet is to impress the mind with feelings of the beauty, gran- 
deur, or sublimity of the object it produces. Now what kin 
perfection of proportion is that, by which a building fail 

t of architecture; and by which, material, labour, and talent 
are expended in order to make a building appear l to 

produce an inferior impression <>n the mind, throug 

Sight, to that which it m: j kd and 

piling all th< ich other, was to product 

; impressions of sublimity, grandeur, or bea ty upon the 
mind of the beholders. To Bend them home to reflect, caloul 
and compare, in order to arrive at a just impression of the n 

nitude and sublimity of St. i £ archi- 

ve quantity oi stones and human 
labour in any shape, would, upon consideration and reflection, 
produce this after thought impression just and 

perf rtion, which fails in tin.' end and object of 

is the entailed nonsense of artists handed down from one - 

ti<>ii to another, ami adopted as I undenis ma 

In the line arts, as in pol it of 

their neighb 



216 POPULATION OF ROME. 

Rome is not quite so populous as Edinburgh. It contains 
1*58,678 inhabitants. About a century ago, viz. in July, 1714, 
the inhabitants w ere found to amount to 143,000; but the Jews, 
not being human beings at that time in the estimation of the 
church, and who amount to 8000 or 9000, were not included in 
that enumeration. The number of ecclesiastics in the present 
population is 5267; viz. 1478 secular clergy, 2208 monks, or 
persons belonging to monastic establishments, and 1581 nuns. 
About a century ago, the whole ecclesiastical population was 
reckoned at 6285, and 1814 nuns. The houses of the middle 
and lower classes are four or five stories high, containing several 
families under one roof with one common entry and stairs; 
and the streets are narrow, dirty, and without foot pavement. 
The Canongate and Cowgate of Edinburgh give a good idea of 
the ordinary streets of Rome. Half or more of the area within 
the walls is not occupied with buildings, and probably never was 
built upon. It entered into the principle of the military forti fi- 
xation of cities before the invention of gunpowder, to leave such 
a space as would protect the citizens inhabiting the centre from 
missiles, and would also furnish room and fodder for a day or tw r o, 
for sheep or cattle driven upon an alafm within the walls. The 
enormous extent of walls around ancient cities, in some Eastern 
remains, of many leagues in circuit, is by no means an indication, 
as antiquarians consider it, of an enormous resident population ; 
but merely of the numbers of men who, from without as well as 
from within, and from a circle possibly of several leagues from 
the city, could be raised to man the walls on the approach of a 
besieging army. The fortifications constructing round Paris are 
laid out upon this old principle. 

The expenditure of the large incomes of the nobility and high 
clergy resident in Rome, and of the revenues of the Papal States, 
estimated to be about 1,800,000 pounds sterling, and of which 
the greater proportion is laid out in Rome itself, every thing be- 
ing centralised in this city, and the considerable sums, besides, 
expended by strangers, should make Rome one of the wealthiest 
cities in the world, for this expenditure among her population 
has been going on for ages within her walls. Yet no^ city, 
except Naples, displays so much poverty and misery, and has so 
many wretched idle people wandering about in it. They live 
each in his station, beggar or banker, thief or prince, upon this 
money that is passing through. They breed up to the subsis- 
tence it gives, each in his station ; are numerous enough to keep 



217 

. tbenjera 

unongthan. rhej bi. l . Lnduatry »1 

when the amount wm ■ , ational 

biatextl , • 4. n m « ha ve been such el of 

The s,-v.,, bills of ancient *»»™I 

alluvial inn, '• ' ; the left bank 1 

off: l ''7rl ill 1 -,, seven lulls 

nun ***?! t ■ hi,: 

u eminences otiron V >< to lOTtee* « de ^ lrtioI1 of 

plain; and althoi SdSfihdro* 

roil during so m. »«JJ-J m arked in B 

they are still v,r ,« ^ " Towev Hill, in L 

Lndgate Hill, - Hill, Snow Hd or 

don. The 1 ; not en^n • U*M» ^ q 

ground. The Capitol is stJU » *ta. f ,. 

Srouud plan of the a ^^ n ^partial In 

basis of • -t'ons 

hould b ** 

ground around the ancxej Jbu.ldw ■, - ^^ 

the, 

ground were built upon or « u u ». 

o^d irregularly by aecumulati ^ , 

1 '" nlmi ' ^-nhu^hVnlt 

"K** St have 

fell from the Tarpeian rock jight h 

gaffieientlywell.if .1 t^raS F™» d ** 

it wa> perhaps hollowed out. o : '^ ,an - Tlio ■! . mu ,l,ly 

ftefbdtof»«teeppr< ^ thick. 

•rn^ercUyey-^aayeUowand^ 



218 POSITION OF ROME. 

others having water only occasionally under them/ It is deep 
and rapid enough to have been a good natural defence on one 
side for a town, and the population has always been principally 
on the left bank, between the river and the hills or eminences 
included within the walls. 

What is there in the situation of this city, upon and around 
some small eminences on a plain by the side of a small river, 
which could give her that mastery over the neighbouring little 
states and towns, that led to the subjugation of Italy, and of the 
known world 1 Some principle in the physical advantages of 
the position of this city must have occasioned the continued 
advance of its power. The only very obvious advantage is, that 
the inhabitants of this position had a constant supply of water, 
had a defensible retreat on these hills, protected on one side by 
a river not fordable, and had the command of the whole plain of 
the Campagna, as a cavalry-power acting from a centre. The 
other cities and states conquered in the early period of the 
Roman progress were all situated, probably for the sake of drink- 
able water, among the hills which skirt the Campagna, and could 
only draw their forage, pasturage, and even their bread-corn, 
from this plain, the higher grounds around it being more adapt- 
ed for vines and olive-trees than grain crops. , Rome, from the 
hour of her foundation, occupied the best natural position for 
defence and aggression, had under her eye and command the 
routes up to the higher grounds by which the supplies of grain 
and forage of the other little states must pass, and they could 
only march into the Campagna with cavalry, or deploy troops 
in it, by a few routes known and seen from Rome. The amal- 
gamation of every little rival city with Rome, and the voluntary 
removal of the inhabitants to Rome, indicate that her position 
commanded their military movement and food. 'Their supply 
of water has evidently not been so permanent and certain as 
that of Rome; and their forage and grain more exposed to de- 
struction. 

Here, as in every site of early inhabitation, water appears to 
have been the mother of society. Water has been the first of 
the common gifts of nature to all human beings, which has been 
claimed and appropriated by individuals. Water has been pro- 
perty long before land was appropriated, and it must, from the 
first day of the existence of the human race, have in the greater 
part of the world been appropriated by a community exclusively 
l to themselves ; and its use, from the first, been subject to laws 



CAUSES OF THE RISE OF ROME. 219 

illations, as a pro] 

in any individuals of it. Civilisation, 

a ppe ar to have originated in I i «lly 

watered, that is, have water only 

: at all 

rally in the land 
day of human e 

particular w . ami to appr 

to their own peculiar use. In those countries in which water is 

abundant every where and at all seasons — as in North America 

— no such natural want has forced men into social union, 
they still wander uncivilised, unconnected, and without gov- 
ment or law, unless to the extent that self-defence < 
to unite in nomade tribes. Civilisation comes to such coun; 
from without by their subjugation, or their intercourse with 
more civilised people. Civilisation itself has arisen from 
necessity of supplying a natural want — has sprung from the 
waters. In India, Mesopotamia, E- 

civilised countries of the old and new cor ■ in 

which men have first congregated in soci' from the 

very nature of the countries, must have been apnr< and 

been a cause of law, government, and regulation from the \ 
first day of the existence of human beings in them. I conceive 
this to be a more I le conjecture upon the progress of 1 

to social union and government, than the fanciful thi 
by phih of men passing through three distinct 

from the hunter state to the Ed m the shepherd 

state to the agricultural, and thence to the ap] I Q of 

land, and the adoption of law and government. There is no 
tendency of, no- motive for, men in ai 

into the other. The hunter and shepherd require the rai 
of a hundred hills. Society, or even neighbourhood, is advx 
to their subsistence. We see, in I I ica 

and in .A pie in the hunter i 

got beyond tl 

If we consider the remains of I walls 

in Italy and 8 prior to the 

the Roman or t 1 . f earth ^ 

taining sculptured remain 

D even by tradition, which are found in the t : 
America, and in the stt ppes of Asia — and, above all, it" 
bider the intellectual remains of former civilisation, more in> 



2-0 ORIGIN OF THE RIGHTS OF PROPERTY. 

perishable than the material, the structure, and relations of the 
religion, and of the languages of the rudest tribes, connecting 
them with a state of great mental development in those who 
first constructed those systems, we must come to the conclusion 
that the shepherd and hunter states are the retrograde, and not 
the progressive steps of the human race from one stage of civili- 
sation to another, that the wandering uncivilised tribes of man- 
kind now in the hunter or shepherd state, in America and Asia, 
are the expiring remnants of an earlier civilisation, and of varie- 
ties of our species which have originally stood on a far higher 
material and intellectual grade of social existence than at pre- 
sent. 

It is no idle speculation to inquire into the origin of property. 
Hundred- weights of books have been written on subjects less 
important. Is the right of property derived from society? 
Does the individual derive his right to appropriate, to indi- 
vidualise a portion of land, water, or other of the common gifts 
of nature to the human species, from a previously existing right 
of the whole community to that property, and to parcel and 
grant it out to its several individual members, under regulations 
and conditions for the general good of the community ? Or is 
society derived from the right of property? Have social union, 
law, and government, originated from individuals seizing on, and 
appropriating to their own exclusive use, portions of the com- 
mon gift of nature for the subsistence of the species, and then 
meeting, and forming society for the mutual defence, by arms, 
law, and government, of their individualised property? Idle as 
such questions or speculations may appear, they are not without 
their practical application at the present day. The right of 
every man to do with his own as he likes, and the right of a 
government to interfere, either in the use and application of 
property, or in the general arrangement of property in the social 
economy of a country — as, for instance, to alter the distribution 
of the land by abolishing the rights of primogeniture in heritage 
— depend, in the abstract, upon this question — is society insti- 
tuted for the protection of previously existing rights of property, 
or is property derived from previously existing rights vested in 
society? 

What was the real amount of civilisation among the ancient 
Romans, understanding by civilisation the physical and moral 
good enjoyed by the mass of the community? This must not 
be measured by their literature, architecture, and statuary. 



! 
The Btal 

ilacious : 

nob] BBoult pi 

of t \- with wonderful preciBion I of 

v, ithout I 

;itive, or of the community around him, in 
Jbrta and cuiivi q] his 

ur. The buildings, baths, fish-pOl 
- of ancient Rome, 
public, or to a Tery small master-class in the commomi 
the population which produc 1 not in any 

bent lllgher physical or 

by their own labour. This is the ial diileit 

hour and free labour. The slave labourer D 
be, and no doubt thed, and t. 

lie free labourer. The A oer, the 

old West Indian planter, the Russian noble, tell us so. i 
BO&ny travellers conlirm their account. But the labour of the 
slave does not tend to raise his condition, lr no im- 

provement in it d moral state. His physic 

when it is equal in comfort and wellbeing to that of the I 
labourer, is not the fruit of his own labour. His civili 
not advanccl The public and 

ren of utility, and the agriculture itself of ; 
apj" all carried on for the gratification and 

of a small master rking in 

slaYery, and suffering in slavery. The Baling of labour — an 
• which has led to the in all t! 

•ciety- — v 

kained a" 

time, labour, human 

though a country may be filled by it with 

tWrrll tl 

the taste for I 

pienoe of the The Individ u at in rea 



% 222 CIVILISATION OF ANCIENT ROME. 

ing Lis gratification. The taste is principally a gift of nature, 
connected with the organisation of the individual, cultivated 
with little trouble, and to be enjoyed in slavery or in freedom. 
No exertion of his, or very little, is required to enable him to en- 
joy fine music, fine paintings, fine statuary, and no benefit to 
others is involved in his enjoyment. But the taste for the pro- 
ducts of the useful arts can only be gratified in freedom, and by 
free exertion, mental and bodily, of the individual in a free 
social state. Industry, forethought, and social co-operation, 
besides the free use of property, are all necessary to enable the 
individual to gratify, or even form his taste for the useful arts, 
even in their most simple applications, as in his clothing, lodg- 
ing, furniture. 

The importance of the fine arts as humanising influences in 
society have been much over-rated. Such objects and tastes as 
belong to the fine arts are necessarily confined to the highest 
ranks of the community. No other class of society was thought 
of by scholars at the revival of literature and of a knowledge of 
the fine arts. It was the public, it was the sole patron of intellec- 
tual merit ; and what influenced or gratified this small class- 
which scarcely extended beyond the court circle of the monarch, 
was raised to exaggerated importance, and made a standard for 
all excellence ; and the prejudice continues to this day. But in 
reality the great mass of society, the most moral, influential, and 
intellectual, and in every sense the most civilised portion of it in 
Europe, the middle classes, never, generally speaking, saw an ob- 
ject of the fine arts in their lives, have no taste for any of the 
fine arts, unless as these may be connected with their trades 
and occupations. Unless the fine arts are carried' on as useful 
arts, that is, as trades repaying free independent industry, they 
neither add to, nor denote civilisation in a community ; and 
then they add to it less than the useful arts, because from their 
nature they employ less industry. They depend entirely on the 
individual, on his single talent or genius, or execution alone ; 
the useful arts on the co-operation of many individuals. Music, 
painting, statuary, and architecture, as far as it is a fine art dis- 
tinct from masonry, employ but the head and hand of the one 
artist. If the humanising influences of the fine and the useful 
arts may be measured by the civilisation of those who cultivate 
them, the professors of the fine arts stand, as a glass in society, 
below, in morality and intelligence, the class of manufacturers or 
merchants engaged in the production or circulation of the objects 



Cl\ 

[f the comparativi 
of the hue and the useful arte be measured 
tv most favourable to their development, ? 
under di .it the money, labour, and fciun 

the oommnnity can be concentrated, and commanded into 
production of objects of the fin and it is under 

meni only, and the security ofproj I its wide diffusion in 

dety, that the useful arts prosper. 

The amount of independent industry in a country, th 

the free labour, bodily or mental, which the la 1 

for liis own gratifications, physical and moral, 

true measure of its civilisation, and not 

f ures. music Can Bavaria be cob 
the enjoyments ot' civilised life by all munity, alth< 

the country is drained and squeezed to produce the frippery in 
t-he line arts which adorns Munich 1 The and- 
people, have enjoyed little of this independent indi r 1 »« - 

i he working producing population i wry. They 

wanted those objects of the acquired tastes which both give em- 
aient to and are the gratitications of industry in modern so- 
ciety. Annihilate in Europe, as gratific rally diflru 
and as incentives to industry, the use vi' silk, OOtton, linen, and 
-leather for ordinary clothing materials, the U 

'-tilled liquors, spiceries. and our ten-thoii- 
( other modern stiniu! tndiments for the gratification 

of the palate, the for the ej I and all : 

chinery for the hands, of book- 9, know] 

the mini, and leave only bread, wine, oil, and wool. :ain 

materials on which industry is employed, -lave labour as the 
means of production, and triumphal arches, 
public games, and spectac 

each other and of wild beasts tearing to pieces d 

intellectual gratifications — and we get probably pretty near 

a just idea of the civilisation of the mass of the people of and 
.e in the most flourishing period of the tine B 



224 the pope's benediction. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

THE POPE'S BENEDICTION. VATICAN LIBRARY. TOMB OF CLEMENT XIII* 

HORSES OF MONTE CAVALLO. ANCIENT AND MODERN SCULPTURE. 

The pope's benediction of the people, from a balcony on the 
outside of St. Peter's, is a fine sight. Troops, body-guards ; 
yeomen in red and yellow clothing of the costume of Henry 
VIII.'s time, splendid equipages, gaudily dressed servants, ladies, 
officers of all countries, monks, priests in great variety and con- 
trast of habiliments, a moving mass of uniforms, feathers, and 
lace, and an assemblage of 30,000 people, not wedged into a 
tight, immovable heap, but undulating in the vast area in front 
of St. Peter's, form a very fine sight — very fine to talk about 
afterwards — but, to say the truth, a little tedious to wait upon. 
Sight-seeing is the traveller's dull duty. 

The illumination of the cupola of St. Peter's, which took place 
the same evening, is also a fine sight — and is really a magnificent 
effort of art. The outline of the dome, the ribs, belts, windows, 
and all that would be drawn with the pencil *in an outline 
sketch, are first illuminated in the early part of the evening with 
a steady but not brilliant light. This is the finest effect in the 
scene. The cupola looks like some vast thing suspended from 
the heavens. The lines of light give its form, and all between 
them is in utter darkness. On the first stroke of eight o'clock 
the lights start instantaneously into brilliancy, and all is bright- 
ness and dazzle. They have changed in figure as w^ell as in 
splendour, and now form belts of diamond-shaped forms round 
the dome. This magically quick change — done while the first 
three strokes of eight are striking — is effected by a number of 
exercised people, one to every fifty lights, with blinds and 
cordage, to unveil them at once. The effect of all this glare is 
not so fine as before. The flickering of the lamps destroy the 
delusion — it is no longer a distant steady light suspended from 
heaven, but a huge chandelier upon the ground. It is altogether 
a sight worth seeing. The pageantry of the holy w r eek concluded 
with a grand display of fire- works from the castle of St. Angelo. 
But fire-works are poor things. What is a sky-rocket to ths 



V \ : 

or a Catherine wheel 6zzing upon a wall, 
yellow, muddy si i the ailent moon hanging o 

Atlai 

( >f all the tombs in the world, I 
impi What 1 .' mind, what hop 

menta, irritations rep The good, the had. the dull, the 

bright, wisdom, folly, the poet's inspiratioi 

halations, the historian 1 -all the working of the 

human intellect for ages sleep on these shelv. 
forgotten! Inth bery of the mind, as in that of tl 

the tomb i- of more value than what it encloses. Thedeooration 
of the rooms, the bookcases, the vast extent of librarian-pal 
— palace in size and magnificence — make this the most princ 

blishment in the world. It itablishment for show, 

forming part of the suitable splendour of the head of the Catholic 
church, not a library for use. You see no books, the 

a having doors of fine wood well locked j no readers, 

dogues : you must believe, because you are told that all the 
literary productions of every age, worth preserving, are en1 
in these magnificent rooms. We are told many things harde. 
be believed than this. 

You go to the library and galleries of t lean throe \ 

long gallery, in which a vast number of ancient inscription-. 
tombstones principally, an and built into 

the walls. From the rude, irregular way in which the 
are cut in ancient Roman inacri] l upon triumphal 

arches, and under statues and Buch LI it must 

bat people of the middle class among the I 
the architects, sculptors, and the mass of the people who i 
ployed them, or saw their works, were not generally aequaii 
with the use of letters, with writing and reading. Th • 
of inscriptions, even upon objects of imporl 

ped, of unequal sizes, with foequenl ions among them, 

with the words sometimes running into each other, som&tii 

Is in the middle, as if two the lines 

—in short, such v. 
at the pi laid 

►re him, ig any 1. 

letters ; and such work as only a pul 

ion. It is probable that the sculpt »r of the Minerva did 
noi know his A, B, C. Great perfection in execution in scul] I 



22G TOMB OF CLEMENT XIII. 

painting, and music, is not incompatible with gross ignorance. 
Phidias may have been as unlettered as a Russian slave. A com- 
mon millwright, to exercise his trade, must be able to read, 
write, calculate and think. The one is the civilisation of the 
line arts, the other of the useful arts. 

In St. Peter's, a tomb of Clement XIII., the work of Canova, 
attracts the general admiration of the travelling world, or rather 
the figures of a Muse, Genius, or somebody of that family, re- 
clining upon a beautifully sleeping lion, on one side of the pedi- 
ment, the figures of the size of life ; and on the other side of it, 
a full length female of the same family, with a ditto also sleeping 
most naturally ; and on the top sits the Pope in marble, in full 
costume, as good as alive, and as large. The figure of the 
reclining genius, and the sleepiness of the lion, are, beyond 
doubt, wonderfully fine, and well expressed : but where is 
the beauty or grandeur of conception, in putting a fine naked 
figure reclining, tout a son aise, upon a wild beast fast sleep ? 
The beauty of the execution cannot redeem the poverty of 
the conception. What is there in the idea and combination, 
grand, poetical, agreeable, natural, or comprehensible ? The 
parts and execution may be ever so exquisite, the idea is com- 
mon-place, weak, unpoetical, and worthless. I admire this work, 
therefore, not as an effort of mind and imagination; but of chisel 
and mallet. In contrast with this finely executed piece of 
sculpture, and in that respect worthy of all admiration, look at 
the horses of the Monte Cavallo. These are pieces of ancient 
sculpture, ascribed, but without any sufficient reason, to Phidias, 
and Praxiteles. The horses are like nothing equinine. Their 
necks are thicker than their bodies. If such shaped horses ever 
existed, they must have been a cross between a Berkshire pig 
and a Shetland pony. Yet what fire, what life, what poetry in 
the attitudes of these uncouth animal-bodies in the act, ap- 
rently, of dashing over a precipice ! The very unwieldiness itself 
of the shapes, brings out the energy of the attitudes. And the 
human figures, the Castor and Pollux, top-heavy figures like 
boatswain's mates, all head and arm, and breadth of shoulder 
above, and no corresponding breadth of loin, or buttock, or 
thighs and legs, to support such upper works of men — yet their 
attitudes, and grouping with those hippopotami-like horses, are 
poetical, are grand, and give grandeur and effect to the parts. In 
Canova's work, the parts give the value to the conception : here 
the conception throws its grandeur over the parts. Who thinks 



ANCIENT AND MODERN SCULPTt 327 

here of the finish, and artistica! execution 1 If fine form 
and horses were the things intruded by these ancient sculpt 

they have, in truth, succeed, »d marvellously ill. But evidently 

tliesc poet-artists never intruded t<> givea lac-Minilrot avii 

to his shoe nails, and of a man down to hisepau! -tail. 

They give an idea, like the poet's, made out in part, and in 
more completeness than enables the imagination of the reader or 
spectator to work out the rest. Tin' heads of the horai et in 

the air, have the last touch of art ; th live, and are in all the 

energy of action. The rest is in sketch, is ] mrposely blocked out only. 
The spectator's own mind throws over the whole work the spirit, 
character, and energetic action of the heads. Canova's work in 
this tomb proceeds upon a different principle — the very embroi- 
dery on the hem of the Pope's garment is carefully made out — the 
tailor who sewed it might depone to every stitch — and, with 
what I humbly conceive to be a littleness of taste, a corner of 
the robe is brought over the ledge of the pedestal, to show the 
fidelity of the representation of the piece of cloth. Those 
ancient sculptors have not put even bits or bridles on their 
magnificent horse-heads. The attitude and fire of what is re- 
presented, tell that these horse-like animals are in the act of 
springing, but are restrained. The attitudes of the human 
figures tell that they restrain. Buckles and bridles are pur- 
posely left out ; because unnecessary to convey their conceptions 
in all their force to the spectator's mind. In modern sculpture, 
these minute details would be laboriously brought in, and 
exquisitely finished ; overloading the conception intended to be 
conveyed, and weakening its impression. This appeals to be 
the great difference between ancient and modern sculptures. The 
ancients were poets in the art, and philosophers, who had anal;. 
the principles on which effect is produced, as well as great prac- 
tical artists. In practical excellence in the art. in express 
physical beauty and grace of attitude in the female or the male 
figure, Canova, and the school of Canova. perhaps, equal the 
ancients. The Venus of Canova is equal, in the estimation of 
many, to the Venus de Medici, as a representation of ideal 
beauty and grace ; but neither of these great works of art repre- 
sent mind. Physical beauty and gi btitude in the utm 
ideal perfection is all they aim at. The Nipbe, the Ari^tides at 
Naples, the Moses of Michael Angela, and many bu>ts here, 
belong t<> a higher class of composition khan the works which 
merely express the perfections oH shape, form, and attitudes of 



228 ANCIENT AND MODERN SCULPTURE. 

the human body, which are called beauty and grace. They 
express also mental power, intelligence, working of mind, energy. 
In this class of works, the modern school of sculpture has pro- 
ductions not sufficiently estimated ; as, for instance, the basso- 
relievo by Tenerani of two Christians, a brother and sister, 
exposed to a tiger in the Flavian amphitheatre. The expression 
of devotion and resignation mingled with fear, in the two prin- 
cipal figures, is great. The tiger and the slave letting him out 
of his den, are superfluous in the composition, as the story tells 
itself in the expression of the two principal figures. The 
Laocoon is considered one of the finest productions of the art of 
sculpture; because it represents not merely physical perfection 
of the human frame in action, but the physical sufferings. It 
does so. The countenance and whole attitude and frame of 
Laocoon express the utmost agony of bodily pain ; but the 
Niobe cowering over her child in the attitude to hide or cover it, 
the Aristides speaking -with dignity and energy, are works of a 
higher class, expressing mental suffering or acting. The false 
object of almost all modern sculptors to attain in their statues 
the highest ideal of physical beauty and grace, has the conse- 
quence, that in proportion as they approach the ideal, they lose 
the natural. They lose all individuality. The figures round the 
tomb of an Indian Begum, might do for Minervas, or Hebes, or 
Venuses, or Madonnas, or whatever the artist may choose to call 
them, by merely hanging about them the appropriate ornaments 
and appendages. The heads, figures, attitudes, and expression 
will do for any thing. In modern painting and statuary, what 
you see, are a few Grecian figures performing a scene. They are 
actors of all work. Walk on to the next piece of canvass, or 
piece of marble, you find the same countenances, the same figures, 
attitudes, costumes, and expression, representhig persons, events, 
or conceptions of a totally different character, age, country, and 
people. Raphael gives you a touch of reality in his most ideal 
figures. They are each of them individualised. In the fresco 
painting, for instance, of a Venus pleading to Jupiter, in the 
Farnese palace, there is reverence, mingled with anxiety and 
grace, in the countenance of the pleading figure — and it is an in- 
dividual's face and form. It is not the faultless, inexpressive 
Grecian countenance, belonging to a class rather than an indi- 
vidual, such as represents Venus in the works of other painters. 
Apollos, Venuses, Apostles, Madonnas have, in fact become, both 
in marble and on canvass, conventional figures, which the speo 



! AND MODERN 229 

not, to any Datura] type of the beautiful within 
own feeling, nor to any Lndividualisation of 

but ' which .'i ccntur. >uM 

have rep and have admired an Apollo In a fall-pottoi 

wig, and a Venus in a hoop-p . and no* 

| i OOStumes, attitudes, and style of 

oountenanoes, quite *a widely apart from the natural in any 
human b low-feeling with. Until 

sculptors and painters emancipate themselv- nave 

done, from this classical imitation and prestige, and follow 
natural instead of conventional types, as Michael Angelo and 
Raphael have done, the sign-painter and gingerbread-baker may 
claim brotherhood in their arts. 



230 CHURCH OF ROME. 

CHAPTER XVII. 

CHURCH OF ROME CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. 

The power of ancient Rome in the meridian of her glory was 
not so wonderful as her subsequent and her present dominion 
over the mind of man. Physical power we can understand. 
We see its growth. We see its cause along with its effect. 
We see armies in front, and civil authority in rear. But this 
moral power, this government over the rnind, extending through 
regions more vast and distant than ever the Roman arms con- 
quered, is the most extraordinary phenomenon in human his- 
tory. The papist claims it as a proof of the Divine origin and 
truth of his doctrine. The Protestant and the philosopher in- 
quire what principles of human origin give this power over the 
minds of men such wonderful extension and durability. To 
compare the machinery of each establishment, the Catholic and 
Protestant, the means by which each of these churches works 
upon the human mind — an inquiry altogether distinct from any 
investigation or comparison of the scriptural foundations of their 
different doctrines — would be a noble subject for the philosopher 
and historian, and one belonging strictly to metaphysical and 
political science, not to theology. It would bring out many of 
the most hidden springs of mental action, would elucidate many 
of those great moral influences which have agitated nations, and 
which are sometimes dormant but never extinct in society ; 
and would explain some of the most important historical events 
and social arrangements of Europe. A few observations upon the 
present state and working of the machinery of each church, as 
they appear to the traveller in passing through Catholic and 
Protestant lands, may turn the attention perhaps of the philoso- 
phic inquirer to this vast and curious subject. 

Catholicism has certainly a much stronger hold over ^the hu- 
man mind than Protestantism. The fact is visible and undeni- 
able, and perhaps not unaccountable. The fervour of devotion 
among these Catholics, the absence of all worldly feelings in 
their religious acts, strike every traveller who enters a Roman 
Catholic church abroad. They seem to have no reserve, no 
false shame, false pride, or whatever the feeling may be, which, 



in individus 

private, hidd affirir of I Sere, and 

in Catholic countries, you see well-dressed peop fthc 

higher as well aa of the lower or 
pavement of the church, totally regardless of. and am 
l>y the crowd of pas - and 1V0. I 

have Christian cha : ty enough re, and I that 

man's mind who does not believe thai de- 

votion, and not hypocrisy, display. It 

LtBon, that ii" i old il«*i*i \ ight- 

tion from the act — not more thau a man's vanity 
could he gratified by his appearing in shoes* or a bat, whore all 

ne. In ii«> Pi wit- 

the Bame intense abstraction in prayer, the 
>tion of mind. The beggar-woman comes in here and ki. 
down by the side of 1 1 1 < I evidently n g of 

intrusioi -elfin the mind of either. To the praise of 

. no worldly distil* human I 

I roperty, much less money payment for places in a j 
ship. to enter into their imag 3. Their chur 

God's houses, open alike to all his rational cr . without dlSr 

jtion of high or low, rich or poor. All who have a soul to he 

freely to worship. They have no family pews, no 

teel souls, and >eats for vulgar Boula. Their hot 
of worship are not let out, like the* 

burgh kirks, for money rents for the si The mil. lie 

mind is evidently more religionised than in I at count 

Why should sueli Btrong devotional feeling be more widely dif- 
fused and more conspicuous among people holdii 
trines. than among us Protestants holding i This 

question can onlj aparing the machinery of each 

church. 

Although our doctrine he right, our church-machinery, that 
i-. our clerical establishment, is no; and perhaps from 

the very reason that <»ur doctrine i tive 

as that of the Catholics. In the popish church, the clergyman 
is more 'c t'» invest him 

with in our Protestant church, and more oat off from all worldly 
affairs. It is very up-hill work in the church of England, ami 

Still more BO in the church of' Scotland, for the I lerg] man to im- 
press his flock with the persuasion that !>■• tar man and 
more able to in- tem, than piallv pious and 



232 CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. 

equally well-educated man in the parish, whose worldly circum- 
stances have given him equal opportunity and leisure to cultivate 
his mind ; and in every parish, owing to the diffusion of know- 
ledge, good education, and religious feeling, among our upper 
and middle classes, there are now such men. The Scotch country 
clergyman in this generation does not, as in the last, stand in 
the position of being the only regularly educated, enlightened, 
religious man perhaps in his whole congregation. He has also 
the cares of a family, of a housekeeping, of a glebe in Scotland, 
of tithe in England, and, in short, the business and toils, the 
motives of action, and objects of interest that other men have. 
It is difficult, or in truth impossible in our state of society, to 
impress on his flock that he is in any way removed from their 
condition, from their failings or feelings ; and it would be but a 
delusion if he succeeded, for he is a human being in the same 
position with themselves, under the influences of the same 
motives and objects with themselves in his daily life. 

The machinery of the Roman Catholic church is altogether 
different, and produces a totally different result. The clergyman 
is entirely separated from individual interests, or worldly objects 
of ordinary life, by his celibacy. This separates him from all 
other men. Be their knowledge, their education, their piety, 
what it will, they belong to the rest of mankind in feelings, in- 
terests, and motives of action, he to a peculiar class. His avarice, 
his ambition, or whatever evil passions may actuate him, lie all 
within his own class, and bring him into no comparison or col- 
lision with other men. The restriction of celibacy led, no doubt, 
to monstrous disorder and depravity in the age preceding the 
Reformation — an age, however, in which gross licentiousness of 
conduct and language seems to have pervaded all society — but it 
is a vulgar prejudice to suppose that the Catholic clergy of the 
present times, are not as pure and chaste in their lives as the 
unmarried of the female sex among ourselves. Instances may 
occur of a different character, but quite as rarely as among an 
equal number of our unmarried females in Britain of the higher 
educated classes. The restriction itself of celibacy is unnatural, 
and in our church is properly done away with, because we receive 
the elements of the Lord's Supper as symbolical only, not as 
being any thing else than bread and wine, in virtue of the priestly 
consecration. The papists, who receive the elements as tran- 
substantiated by the consecration, require very naturally and 
properly, that the priest should be of a sanctified class, removed 



HI human impuri well 

rom all worldly affair-. 

met h chinches are right, and 

kheir diffi 
4 England alone are inoon ; for 

if they claim ap anc| 

authority for the should 1 

life of celibacy, and repudiate their worldly spouses, inter* 

and objei 

But our Scot by the Reformation in such a 

totally differ gious position aa to the nature of their func- 

tion, are wrong ill in chal- 

lenging b nctity for their order. A d order, 

or class, the] or to have influence founded upon 

any aouiid religious grounds, when the distinction which m 
them a peculiar class in the eyes and feelings of mankind, the 
distinction in their sacramental function, and ooi ^ra- 

tion in all worldly affairs between their class and other v.. 
ceased and was removed. The veneration and sanctity which each 
individual works out for himself by his personal character and 
conduct in his clerical functions alone remain L Afl S member 
of an order, he could t :mr. and receives noth: 

Superior edu< Old the pre.-tige from Catholic times, k 

up a lingering tioniu our Sc B in the 

last g deration : but il claim now in an educat- 

ed age, for members of a profession not better educated than 
men df other pro! rated by any peculiar exelm 

religious function from the ordinary bu 

and modes of living of other well-conducted D fetain a 

rate status in >ociety. analogous to that of the popish eler_ 

They have an elevated, and if they will bo apply the 

perform along with the ordinary duties of] 

but they form no distinct sacred C ion, like I 

tribe of Levi among the Israelites, or like the Catholic dej 
among the papists, bavin us duties or functions which 

none can perform but its members, and to which tin 

tial. Some of our clergy in Scotland in the present day would 
insinuate that they are, by virtue of their ordination, or of their 
duties, a sacred order or class in the eommuni: > a 

papistical pretension so entirely exploded by our Reformation, 

that those of the 8 hurch who make it are afraid i 

Out. The genuine spirit of Calvinism, as adopted by the Scot 



234 CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. 

r 

people, acknowledges no such order of priesthood, admits no such, 
principle. A presbytery has no claim, like the Roman Catholic 
bishops, to sacred apostolic power of ordination. Their exami- 
nations and licenses regard only the education, moral and reli- 
gious character, and fitness of the individual to become a preacher 
in the established state -church, and to serve that particular 
charge to which he is called \ but confer no spiritual gifts, no 
peculiar sacred powers ; and for the good reason, that, in our 
presbyter ian faith, no such gifts or powers are reserved for one 
class of men more than another ; but scriptural knowledge, piety, 
sanctity, and all religious gifts, powers, advantages, and abilities, 
stand equally open to all men, to be attained through faith, and 
their Bibles. As an influential machine in society, our clerical 
establishment cannot therefore, from its nature, have such power 
over the mind as the Roman Catholic priesthood. The latter 
appears also to have taken up a new and more efficient position 
since the settlement of Europe after the revolutionary war. Ca- 
tholicism has had its revival — and its priesthood has used it 
adroitly. 

By the French revolution many of the most glaring and re- 
volting abuses of the Roman Catholic church were abolished. 
In no Catholic country, for instance, not even in Rome, is the 
interference of the church or the clergy, in the private concerns, 
or civil affairs, opinions, or doings of individuals, at all tolerated. 
Its establishments, and powers discordant with the civil au- 
thority, have every where been abrogated. Monks and nuns 
are no longer very numerous, except in Rome and Naples, and 
are nowhere a scandal \ and the vast estates of these establish- 
ments have generally, over all the Continent, been, in the course 
of the last war, confiscated and sold to pay the public debt of the 
state. In Tuscany, for instance, of 202 monastic establishments ; 
viz., 133 of monks, and 69 of nuns, only 40 remain with means 
for their future support and continuance, and 162 receive aid 
from government, until the existing members who survive the 
confiscation of their former estates die out. The rich Neapoli- 
tan monasteries have, in the same way, been reduced in wealth 
and numbers. In France and Germany, the Catholic clergy, in 
general, are by no means in brilliant circumstances. The ob- 
noxious and useless growth of the Catholic church establishment 
has, in almost every country, been closely pruned ; and their 
clergy are, in reality, worse provided for than the Protestant. 
The effects of the Revolution have been to reverse the position 



of til 

on 1 1 

popv ; i r and i 

bk, and well paid for 
The aleek, fit, narrow-minded, wealthy djom 
for on I »pil benoh, or on the prebendal Btall oft 

Latheran or Anglican ohu 

mini manlike in mind, i l, in 

the d I Tke | 

ken, intellectual recluse* em road tart tm bis 

to or from his Btudiee or church duties, livin . 
but all know in the p ipon a wretched | 

in hi -and this is the popish priest of the II 

century — has all the ition with the multii 

ii>v gii Lng effect to hi ing. 

Our clergy, especially in Scotland, have ■ very erroneous im- 
of the popish i In oar country 

churches, we often hear them prayed for as men wallowing in 
luxury, and sunk in gross ignorance. This is somewhat injudi- 
cious, as well as uncharitable; for when the youth of 
gations, who, in this travelling age, m ae in com 

abroad with the Catholic clergy bo described, find them in learn- 
ing, liberal ;ne piety, 
docti y different from the description and tin 
bersj bhere will unavoidably arise comparisons in tlie mi 
oially of females and young susceptible -. by no 
lifying, or flattering to their cleric rrs at l.< 
Catholic and monks at the time of the lie-formation, i 
have b( en all that our Scotch clergy fancy them si ill to be; hut- 
three centuries, a French revolution, and an incessant i 
of intelli , make a dj r or 
worse, in the spirit even of clerical oorporationa Our chmvh- 
men should understand better the strength of a fbrmidabl 

sary, who is evidently gaining ground hut b 

int church, and who, in this age, brin field, 

1 and purity of life equal to 
in theological scholarship, and a general knowledj 
perhaps, to their own. The education of the regular 
the Catholic church is, perhaps, positively higher, and, beyond 
doubt, comparatively higher than th< ion of th< 3 

clcr itively highei nt, that am iven 

number of popish and < 



2o6 CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. 

of the former will be' found, who read with ease/ and a perfect 
mastery, the ancient languages, Greek and Latin, and the 
Hebrew and the Eastern languages connected with that of the 
Old Testament — a greater number of profound scholars, a greater 
number of high mathematicians, and a higher average amount 
of acquired knowledge. Is it asked of what use to the preacher 
of the gospel is such obsolete worldly scholarship 1 The ready 
answer is, that if the parish minister of the Scotch church can 
no more read the works of the Evangelists, Apostles, and early 
Fathers easily and masterly in the original Greek, than any 
other man in the parish, knows them only from the translations 
and books in our mother tongue, to which every reading man 
in the parish has access as well as he, and if he has not had his 
mental faculties cultivated and improved by a long course of ap- 
plication to such studies as mathematics, the dead languages, 
scholastic learning, ancient doctrines in philosophy and morals, 
the ancient history of mind and men, and the laws of matter and 
intelligence as far as known to man, on what grounds does he 
challenge deference and respect for his opinions from us his 
parishioners ? We are educated up to him. How can he in- 
struct a congregation who know him to be as ignorant as them- 
selves ? Has the ordination of a presbytery conferred on the 
half-educated lad any miraculous gifts or knowledge 1 If he be 
as ignorant as his hearers of these higher branches of know- 
ledge, which few have his leisure to arrive at, what is it he does 
know ? What is the education, what the acquirements on 
which a presbytery, not better educated than himself, have ex- 
amined and licensed him 1 :• He is like an apothecary ignorant 
of chemistry, compounding his medicines from a book of formulae 
left in his shop by his predecessor, and without any knowledge 
of the nature and properties of the substances he is handling. 
It may be said that the standard of clerical education in Scot- 
land at the present day, is as high as it ever was — as high as in 
any generation since the Reformation. It may be so ; but if 
the public has become educated up to that standard, the clergy 
of the present day have lost the vantage ground of superior edu- 
cation and learning, and consequently of moral influence as 
teachers, as much as if the standard of clerical education had 
itself been lowered. 

In the nature also, of our Presbyterian church service there 
is an element of decay of mcral influence, produced by the 
general advance of society in education, intelligence, and reli- 



CAT' 
mation, ill il J, all k 11. 

mouth from I ' bis pupils. Bui print 

municating know L< 
[fined now bo the branches of know .. ith 

natural substances, and bJ on them. K 

imparted to the mind now* tin 
and the book road, referred to, ooi 

I I private 

inteUeotn Ptment^i renintheunr 

dutyandntilityof the fcer. Readii 

ral instruction to utter inaigni£ 
in public affairs ; and the ancient, but imp. 
ing infbrmatioB by word of mouth is bani the nun 

The inlluence of the oral teacher naturally must 
the utility and importance of his oocu] iple 

of decay of tlie moral influence of oral tuition reaches the J 
srian pulpit. 
It is unfortunate, also, for tlie influence of the Scotch < 
nistic church, that its service consists exclusively of exteo 
rary effusions or temporary compositions. Th I in 

ha>te by inen of mode: n, and often of small abili 

hare to undergo the comparison, in the mind of an educated and 

h similar compositions, 
noons prepar illy for the pies*) by the most able i 

learned divines. The moral influence reel iy on buc 

church service cannot be permanent 
Engl i ah church is founded on a more lasting and indues 

lablished forms of prayer, un< d in 

QBelveS, not placing one minister or his compositions in t 
rtion with another, or with other similar 
lie mind — the almost mechanical operation 
well or ill. being all ( ; 
between two clerg I part of the church doty; 

The . or nan: ber com] 

kind, howev< with the old linn 

it occur in the public mind in England ; 

and wont, antiqn d from childhood to 

.our. and is interwoven with the habits of the , 
ids, in all their n 
The comparative education of the Scotch eh 



238 CATHOLICISM AXD PROTESTANTISM. 

generation, that is to say, their education compared to that of 
the Scotch people, is unquestionably lower than that of the po- 
pish clergy compared to the education of their people. This is 
usually ascribed to the popish clergy seeking to maintain their 
influence and superiority, by keeping the people in gross igno- 
rance. But this opinion of our churchmen seems more ortho- 
dox than charitable or correct. The popish clergy have in 
reality less to lose by the progress of education than our own 
Scotch clergy ; because their pastoral influence and their church 
services, being founded on ceremonial ordinances, come into no 
competition or comparison whatsoever, in the public miud, with 
any thing similar that literature or education produce ; and are 
not connected with the imperfect mode of conveying instruc- 
tion, which, as education advances, becomes obsolete, and falls 
into disuse, and almost into contempt ; although essential in 
our Scotch church. In Catholic Germany, in France, Italy, 
and even Spain, the education of the common people in reading, 
writing, arithmetic, music, manners, and morals, is at least as 
generally diffused, and as faithfully promoted by the clerical 
body, as in Scotland. It is by their own advance, and not by 
keeping back ihe advance of the people, that the popish priest- 
hood of the present day seek to keep ahead of the intellectual 
progress of the community in Catholic lands ; and they might, 
perhaps, retort on our presbyterian clergy, and ask if they, too, 
are in their countries at the head of the intellectual movement 
of the age ? Education is in reality not only not repressed, but is 
encouraged by the popish church, and is a mighty instrument in 
its hands, and ably used. In every street in Rome, for instance, 
there are, at short distances, public primary schools for the edu- 
cation of the children of the lower and middle classes in the 
neighbourhood. Home, with a population of 158,678 souls, has 
372 public primary schools, with ±82 teachers, and 14,099 chil- 
dren attending them. Has Edinburgh so many public schools 
for the instruction of those classes 1 I doubt it. Berlin, with 
a population about double that of Rome, has only 264 schools. 
Rome has also her university, with an average attendance of 660 
students ; and the Papal States, with a population of 1\ mil- 
lions, contain seven universities. Prussia, with a population of 
14 millions, has but seven. These are amusing statistical facts 
■ — and instructive as well as amusing — when we remember the 
boasting and glorying carried on a few years back, and even to 
this day, about the Prussian educational system tor the people, 



and • 

police regulation the school attendano 
■ 
lv the manifold e 
hinery, and t them oo her nwn Mil 

pie : 

at th 

I of the natural rights of p 

>ly of it as b 
mini and enf 

and regulation the oonsumpt 
fam' 1 

than <>ur philanth 
of their cavil and moral 

erful than both j with us has been v.' 

by our I jgiaL 

1 which . ig can drive it with 

alt, and up to which, as in all 
ing human w demand will produce the supply. 

A fact, that Rome has above a hun I 
iin, for a population little more than half of that of 
in, puts to flight a world of humbug about 

lid their m 

Is it ; 

ae by all I took I — | rlin, 

•phy, history, Ian 
•r, and, above all, the hal 
.11 in the one 

The priesthood and the uno- 

tdonariea well know that reading an 1 writing arc not thinking j 
ate, and all the branches of useful ku 
s, which can enter into the education of 
man in ordinary only increase hifl 

J influence of that higher education which 
the community has no 1 - apply I 

must be confi » a pro?' 

will follow the more readily for being trained, if the 
>wd« 

There is an i 

maxim, that superstition an ism must In 



240 CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. 

ignorance. In Austria, in Prussia, in Italy, it is fonnd that 
.school acquirements and knowledge do not necessarily involve 
thinking, and still less acting ; that, on the contrary, they fur- 
nish distraction and excitement to the public mind, and turn it 
from deeply considering, or deeply feeling, real errors in religion, 
or practical grievances in civil life. Education is become the 
art of teaching men not to think. When a government, a priest- 
hood, a corporate body of any kind, gets hold of the education 
of the people without competition, even in the most minute 
portion, as in a village school, this is invariably the result of 
their teaching. 

It is not difficult to account for the great number of schools 
— consequently the great diffusion of those acquirements which 
are called education — in Rome. The same cause acts in the 
same way in Edinburgh. There is a great demand for that sort 
of labour which may be called educated labour, to distinguish it 
from mechanical labour, but which has as litt.le influence on the 
moral or mental condition of the individual, as shoemaking, or 
chipping stones on the highway, — and the demand produces the 
supply. Church servants of all kinds, from the cardinal down 
to the singing-boy, must be able to read : and the great amount 
of living to be found at Rome in the Church, produces the de- 
mand for instruction in the qualifications. In Edinburgh, and 
generally in Scotland, the same demand for educated labour, in 
the colonies, in mercantile, or legal, or medical professions, and 
in the Scotch church, produces a similar supply. Those who 
raise the supply are, in both cities, generally the young men in- 
tended for the priesthood ; but in Rome the clergy occupy them- 
selves more systematically, and more authoritatively, more in 
the Prussian style, with the education of the people, than they 
have legal power to do with us. They hold the reins, and are 
the superintendents, if not the actual teachers, in all these 
schools. It is very much owing to the zeal and assiduity of the 
priesthood in diffusing instruction in the useful branches 01 
knowledge, that the revival and spread of Catholicism have been 
so considerable among the people of the Continent who were 
left by the revolution, and the warfare attending it, in that state, 
that if the Catholic religion had not connected itself with some- 
thing visibly useful, with material interests, they would have had 
nothing to do with it. The Catholic clergy adroitly seized on 
education, and not, as we suppose in Protestant countries, to 
keep the people in darkness and ignorance, and to inculcate 



inlli. 

and to i ban 

m hich mind us 

i chore! 
( \y noti 

The rei ival of re- 

of the 

which I 

in the d 
Eur 

ttinental people had a religion t 
^ar. How have the two churches of Europe availed 
of il of the ] The Pi 

church is shaken to t h tion in lier ancient seats, C 

and Switzerland, and, body politic, has lust, in* 

gained h erthrow of tl 

V\< late king and t] 

in her d 

ve thro^ i 

bolio church. Tl. 
Ie had a reli. I found i 

in i 

formation into th< churohj 

froi 

that the 

lurch whii 

mora] w< and 

Jn the Contini atal r. 

but hasjaho'w d i; 

:>, even l 
|n G ich wuui 



242 CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. 

considered formerly in their churches, as deistical, unitarian, 
bocinian. In Britain, also, the Protestant church has got into a 
false position. The clergy, both in the church of England and 
in the church of Scotland, have been attempting to unite the 
two opposite poles — power and popularity — and in their struggle 
for church power, and church influence, have lost the lead in the 
religious revival of the age. It is not the church in either coun- 
try now that sustains, or directs, or even represents the religious 
sentiments of the people, but the offsets from the clerical body 
acting independently of the church, and forming an evangelical 
laity. The scholars have outgrown the teachers; and the teach- 
ers, instead of advancing with, and leading the progress of the 
age, are in danger of becoming superannuated appendages on 
the religion of the people, sustained by it, not sustaining it; nor 
capable of directing it in the vast educational and missionary 
efforts which the religious sentiments of the people are making 
by their own agents, while their clergy are battling for church 
wealth, or church power. 

The Roman Catholic Church, with its more effective machi- 
nery of a priesthood, has held the bridle, and guided the public 
mind in this great revival of religious feeling in Europe, more 
cleverly than the Protestant. It has evidently entered more 
fully into the spirit of the age, has seen more clearly what to 
give up, and what to retain, in the present intellectual state 
of the European mind, and has exerted its elasticity to cover 
with the mantle of Catholicism, opinions wide enough apart to 
have formed irreconcilable schisms and sects in former ages. 
Monkish institutions, onerous calls upon the time or purse of 
the common man, relic-veneration, vows, pilgrimages, auricu- 
lar confessions, penances, and processional mummery, appear to 
be silently relaxed, or relinquished, wheresoever the public mind 
is too advanced for them. The old Catholic clergy and their 
kind of Catholicism appear to have died out, or to be placed in 
an inactive state, and young men of new education and spirit to 
have been formed, and set to work : and these men have taken 
up their church as they found her, shorn of temporal and politi- 
cal power in almost every country, and of all social influence in 
a great part of Europe, and even with the means of living re- 
duced to a very scanty pittance in France, and other Catholic 
lands, and have set to work from this position, without looking 
back, with the zeal and fervency which perhaps only flourish in 
poverty. It is so far from being on the ignorance of the people, 



this i b >lic pri 

i, which 
ed to any Christian i ition. 'I 

Christianity *ni ] ,U ^I 

and 

.•it und( out of ti 

of their subjects*. Th >m the \ 

■ rina] pointy hut also I amon in ' 

it church 1. of pr 

not tl epeL 

Lency of the machinery iah 

chur 

&VOU& This unity is appai 
only, not real; but it moral effect on the mind 

the unreflecting, as if it were real. The Catholic reii 

:'. in (act, to every degree of in; ny class 

of intellect. It i • lii<-h adapts its n tin* mini, 

and the whal rone on his knees before a child's doll 

in a glac and praying fervently to the bellissima ^Ma- 

donna, is a Catholic, as well as Gibbon, Stolberg or Bohlege] : but 
his Catholicism is little, if at all, removed from an idolatrous 
faith in the image him, which may in its time have iv- 

presented a Diana of Ephesus, or a, Venus. Their Catholicism 
the result of the in. n of philosophic and 

which, h< i roneous, could have had nothing \ii common 

with that of the ignorant I 

ing in Prussia into tli itholio church at Bonn on the 

Rhine. The pri nMninfrifl and instruct 

of the pariah, in I 
plan, and with the same. vaken the intellectual pon 

of each child by appropriate qi i, as 

mr well-c Sunday schools tl. mghft on the 

if the Eidinburgh Sessional BchooL And what of all 
bject thii Gathol 
and inculcating to Catholic children: and by hk inui, 
tions and th. bringing saoet admirably home to their 

int. forms of 

praj f not un< 

mpanied by mental i 
prefi f talent mental | 

beautifully! i suit the intellig the child 

I looked around me, to be satistied that 1 was realh 



244 CATHOLICISM AND PROTESTANTISM. 

steps of a popish church, and not in the school room of Dr. Muir's, 
or any other well- taught presbyterian parish in Edinburgh. Yet 
beside me, on her knees before the altar, was an old crone mum- 
bling her Pater Rosters, and keeping tale of them by her beads, 
and whose mind was evidently intent on accomplishing so many 
repetitions, without attaching any meaning to the words. Be- 
tween her Catholicism, and that of the pastor and of the new ge- 
neration he was teaching, there was certainly a mighty chasm, a 
distance that in the Protestant church, or in a former age, would 
have given ample room for half a dozen sects and shades of dis- 
sent — a difference as great as between the Pnseyite branch of 
the church of England, and the Poroan Catholic church itself. 
But the mantle of the Catholic faith is elastic, and covers all 
sorts of differences, and hides all sorts of disunion. Each under- 
stands the Catholic religion in his own way, and remains classed 
as Catholic, without dissent, although, in reality, as widely apart 
from the old Catholic church, as ever Luther was from the pope. 
Our Protestant faith sets before all men distinctly one and the 
same doctrine and belief, the same principles, the same Christian 
knowledge, ideas, and objects. There is consequently, distinct 
ground for sectarianism and dissent, in the very nature of the 
Protestant church. These are also abstract ideas which are set 
before men, to which every mind must raise itself, and which 
from the very nature of the human mind, cannot be compre- 
hended so readily, or dwelt upon so long, and so fervently, espe- 
cially by those untrained to mental exertion, as the material 
ideas of crucifixes, images, relics, paintings, and ceremonies, with 
which Catholicism mixes up the same abstract ideas. These 
material objects act, like Leyden jars in electricity, upon the de- 
votion of Catholics : and every one seems to adjust to his own 
mental powers and intelligence, the use of this material machi- 
nery for quickening his devotion. With some, the invocation of 
the Virgin Mary and the Saints, is considered but as a necessary 
logical deduction from the great doctrine of mediation. If the 
mediation of the Son with the Father, be efficacious, the medi- 
ation of the Mother, who must have been the most perfect of cre- 
ated beings as the chosen vessel for our Redeemer's conception, 
with her Son, who in filial piety and affection as in all other 
virtue, was perfection, must, according to their not tmspecious 
deduction, be efficacious also. The ora pro nobis, the invocations 
addressed to the Virgin Mary, the Apostles, Saints, and those 
who were either personal friends and companions of our Saviour 



when on 
prin 

:ir. Tie' 111- 

oth< entirely ! 1 it 

idolatrous worahi] 
. J to * bat n Medial 

our 
own >n, the mind rtion or 

them, th I their works j and i 

to a . the human m 

from temptation of 

( Kir belief La the * 
: and thie 

y allied to, and nonrisl 
[nation, than judgment. In this way 
account for the undeniably greater devotional fervour of Oath* 
than of Prot 

T! ity of the Catholic church ada] If to ev 

mind, instead of i mind up to it. h 

of the advance of Catholicism in the present day, among the en- 
lightened, as well as the ignorant c nd the great cans 
tlie small influence of Catholicism in raising the moral and intel- 
lectual c of mankind, and advancing the civilisation of 
society. It is a cap that - head, for every 1 

i or other. Its most absurd doctrinee 

that of the real | in the el 

lausibly enough deduced from the plain we: [pture — 

u This is my body" — not. this is the symbol i 

natural objection evidence ofoui 

the supposed transubstantdati foment of 

une • power to operate a mirad 

hour upon every altar, the inoempatibility with any 
idea of divine power, of the doctrine that r f miracles 

divine power worked 
or will not work at another, although 
and the insuffici 
plea Mind t«» I lie 

[though seeing a: ing in it. This tits some 

find the oonsubetantiation of the Lutheran, 
all more intelligible, than the tram 
tholic, and ac in the oil ma- 



246 CATHOLICISM AND PROTEST ANTISM. 

jority believe that which requires no thinking. The French 
revolution left the minds of men in a rude uneducated state, 
more adapted to receive the material impressions of the Catholic 
faith, the ideas suited to a low, neglected, religious, and moral 
education, than to comprehend and embrace the higher and 
more abstract truths of Protestantism. The military spirit of a 
generation, born and bred in wars and revolutions, and accus- 
tomed to see all distinction and honour resting not upon moral 
worth and good principle, but upon success, promotion, and out- 
ward decoration, could, when a reaction and revival arose in re- 
ligious feeling among them, more easily go over into that church 
in which similar merits and similar emblems are admitted ; and 
supersede mental exertion. 

The period of the French revolutionary war, undoubtedly, 
lowered the tone of moral and religious sentiment in Europe. 
In the events and present results of that vast movement, so 
many enterprises were successful, in which all acknowledged 
moral and religious principles were set aside, and so many agents 
and participators in iniquitous events, attained, and still to this 
day retain, all honour and social consideration, although gained 
in defiance of all moral principles of conduct, that wrong- doing 
has been kept in countenance, and success has been allowed to 
legalize, and cover from the judgment of posterity, the most 
flagitious acts of public historical personages. This is the deepest 
stain upon the literature of our times. Who in all wide Europe, 
which of the many historians of the French revolution — Scott, 
Alison, Carlyle, Thiers — w^ho, who has raised his voice in the 
cause of moral right and integrity 1 Who has applied to the 
test-stone of just moral principle the men and acts he is descri- 
bing to posterity as great and brilliant examples of human con- 
duct ? Who has asked the French generals, marshals, and 
princes, the living individuals who now revel in the eye of the 
world as the highest characters of the age, who has asked them, 
one by one, how did ye amass your immense wealth 1 Is it 
honestly come by 1 Is it the savings of your daily pay and al- 
lowances in your professional stations ? or is it money gained by 
secret participation with your own contractors and commissa- 
ries, or wrung by forced gifts, requisitions, unmilitary robbery — 
in a word, from towns, ancient institutions, and innocent suffer- 
ing individuals ? Where got ye your services of gold and silver 
plate 1 your collections of Flemish, Italian, and Spanish paint- 
ings 1 Were these not forced, plundered from their lawful 



CATIIOLi 

| Win raat 

men oft I 

thepoliti did 

they not follow out the principle, and restore the moral i 

of Euro] did they not make tl. 

wen .villi the f I loll.uxl. < forms Jy, 

ofei i Hamburgh to Beni, and from Bern to Cadis, 

and to Naples, disgorge individually their onmilitar ind 

be property to the countries, towi 
private ; irhom it had been ' all 

principle ilixed warfare I They were not e 

were but the fool birds of prey which foil 
upon the oarc \ down in his flight. Political or mili- 

tary profligacy ill ation an ruinous 

to public morals than private vie principle at 

i!y, and not in a corner, and showing the homage to 
virtue of attempting to hide itself j but nd eon- 

uous social p . ihe control of morality and public 

opinion. The congress of Vienna, in restoring something like a 
balance of power, and a monarchical shape to the Continent, 
only skinned over the wound inflicted on society — made c 
pensation only to kings, and some roy.-d dynasties, not to the 
people j restored nothing of what is of more importance than 
.lis of government, — nothing of the moral principle which h 

I out of its proper place and inflnen< by 

impunity, unmerited honours, and impudent as >n of 

dignity, permitted to the most sh rapine th 

graced the hi civilized people. ML Thiers, the late min- 

r of Fran riting hi 

for mankind, instead of maid inks of 

Rhine. He is 1 11 the cities and i 

which were the I 

ploi ials for a great historical n 

from the commencement of revolution, Elaa VL 

Thiers the moral courage to w h a history y in 

this age ought to be written I Will he bring to the onen 
moral ] 

man he is dealing with as an historian I Will he unmask and 
denounce to posterity, the unprincipled adventurers, pilla_ 

1 marauders, whom accident 

the bravery of their troops, threw up into high and 

stations, and wh fchis day in < f the world, 



248 . CATHOLICISM AtfD PROTESTANTISM. 

the first of men 1 Will he restore the moral tone to society 
which has been lost in France, by the unmerited success and 
splendour of such men ? Or will he only give the world a clas- 
sical work — a fine imitation of the ancient historians, brilliant 
descriptions of marches, battles, intrigues, causes and results of 
events, fine spun, imaginary, eloquent, modelled upon the man- 
ner and style of Thucydides or Tacitus — a work of talent, but 
not of historical philosophic truth, a work which every body 
will praise, few will read, and nobody believe, or be the better 
for ; a work, in short, of leading articles in which every victory 
is unparalleled, every successful general a hero, and glory a cloak 
for the most infamous deeds and characters ? The road is open 
to M. Thiers, and Germany is the country which contains much 
of the materials, to produce the most influential and truly phi- 
losophical history of an eventful period, which the moralist, or 
.the historian teaching morality by example, ever had before 
him. Will M. Thiers have the moral courage to take this 
xoad i 

The results at some future period of the singular moral and 
religious state of the European mind which has followed the re- 
volutionary paroxysm of the beginning of this century, baffle 
-conjecture. The Protestant religion existing, it may almost be 
said, only in detached corners of the world, and there torn into 
a hundred sects and divisions, and the clergy of her two branches 
occupied in unseemly squabbles for power and property, and not 
leading, nor, in public estimation, capable of leading, the reli- 
gious revival among Protestant Christians, nor of meeting and 
refuting the learning, and theological scholarship of professed 
infidel writers — the popish church advancing stealthily, but 
steadily, step by step, with a well-organised, well-educated, zea- 
lous, and wily priesthood at the head of, and guiding the reli- 
' gious revival in her domain of Christianity, and adapting herself 
to the state of the public mind, and the degree of social and in- 
tellectual development in every country, from the despotism of 
Naples to the democracy of New York — the moral tone of so- 
ciety, the power of moral and religious principle over conduct, 
the weight and value of right or wrong in public estimation de- 
ranged, the influence of public opinion on the moral conduct of 
public men lowered, by the countenance given by governments 
to individuals who should be branded in the history of this age 
a3 unprincipled depredators setting all moral and international 
law at defiance in their military and political acts — these aro 



CATlloI .! 

- 

&omy 1 y the new dial ributi 

fchinVing lll;in feel that t : h revolution, as a va- 

movement, is but in i L We are but living in 

a pause beta 



250 THE OLIVE TREE. 



CHAP. XVIII. 

THE OLIVE TREE ITS EFFECTS IN SOCIAL ECONOMY. MAI2E. POTATOES. 

FLORENCE. DIVISION OF LAND IN TUSCANY. STATE OF THE PEOPLE. 

STATE OF THE CONTINENTAL AND ENGLISH FEOPLE COMPARED. 

The inhabitants of the gloomy little towns in the Papal states, 
Civita Castellana, Otricoli, Narni, Terni, their squalid nothing- 
to-do appearance as they saunter in listless idleness about their 
doors, a prey to ague and ennui, are sadly in contrast to their 
bright sunny land, and its glorious vegetation. Their country 
produces every thing — every thing but industry ; and man 
nourishes as a moral intelligent being only where industry is 
forced upon him — and civilization and well-being with industry 
— by natural circumstances — by the want, not the abundance of 
natural products. Truly the plenty of their country is their 
curse. Suppose every kail-yard in Scotland had a tree growing 
at the dyke-side, like the old pollard saughs we usually see there, 
and requiring as little care or cultivation, and that from this 
tree the family gathered its butter, suet, tallow, or an oil that 
answered perfectly all the household uses of these substances, 
either as a nutritious adjunct to daily food in their cookery, or 
for soap, or for giving light to their dwelling — all, in shorfc, that 
our grasslands and dairies, our Russia trade, our Greenland fish- 
eries, produce to us for household uses — would it be no blessing 
to have such trees ? Such trees are the gift of nature to the 
people here in the south, and are bestowed with no niggard 
hand. The olive-tree flourishes on the poorest, scarpy soil, on 
gravelly, rocky land that would not keep a sheep on ten acres of 
it, and a single olive-tree will sometimes yield from a single crop 
nearly fifty gallons of oil. Is this a curse, and not a blessing ? 
Look at the people of all olive-growing countries — and the ques- 
tion is answered. The very productiveness of nature in the ob- 
jects of industry, naturally stifles industry. The countries which 
produce industry, are in a more civilized and moral condition, 
than the countries which produce the objects of industry. The 
Italian governments — the Neapolitan, the Papal, the Austrian, 
the Sardinian — are, perhaps unjustly, blamed for the squalor. 



and wretchedness of the [talian 
men 
or manufactures, where ml and climate produce, with 

i 
labours for. The f all the south of 

probably, nen 

the diffusion of industry and all its moral inline 
tlir useful arts and all their gratifications — nor the ; 
north raised I talian people, it' I 

and cultivation of the 

; i t ion and civilization of mankind. 
The olivi :' the many fruits of the earth v 

supply the natural wants of man here without any i 

d upon his toil, and which lap him in an indol 
ment with a low social condition. The or Indian O 

i<. both physically and morally, the equivalent amoi 
lations of the south, to the potato among those of the north. 

irious that both these addition! of man 

bee, rally cultivated about the nod, both bei 

of unknown or unnoti jin, and the 01 D compel 

. flourishing best, where the other succeeds but imp 
Maize is almost limited to the climate of tlie vine. P 
indeed, succeed, alth< - perfectly both as to quality i 

quantity, within the climate of the maize and vine, but practi- 
cally enter little into the supply of food in those countries in 
which maize BUG n of both t: 

plants is involved in Borne obscurity. The potato is usn 

stated to have been brought home by Sir Walter Raleigh from 
America, in the reign of • ; but we have, in the 

Wives of Windsor, the weighty evidei !ir John F 

liim his opinion. u Let the sky rain -."* — 

The potato must hav and 

gall have admitti h a 

familiar allusion I he maize, from its I": 

bably, I 

Europe from the Bast — to have be. mi the fruii 

and the principal fruit now remaining of tl 

Whi 

pally on maize, the p if will be found to yield in im] 

The amount 

- cultivated, the n. 



^^^^^^™ 



252 MAIZE AND POTATOES. 

cultivated between the rows of vines as a kind of secondary crop. 
The'cultivation of maize acts upon the amount and condition of 
the population — on their numbers and habits, precisely as that 
of potatoes. The moral results have been the same from both. 
Where the land is not the property of the cultivators, but of a 
nobility, as in the Sardinian, Neapolitan, and Papal states, the 
cheap and inferior, but plentiful food in proportion to the land 
and labour bestowed on its production, has brought into exis- 
tence a great population miserably ill off. The difference of 
value between their inferior food of maize, and the value of 
other kinds of food, has only gone into the pockets of their land- 
owners, and their employers. Their condition has been deterio- 
rated by a cheaper food increasing the quantity, and thereby re- 
ducing the value of labour to a rate equivalent to a subsistence 
upon an inferior and cheaper diet. Where the land, again, is 
the property of the labourers themselves, as in Switzerland, in 
Tuscany, in France, the cheaper and inferior food leaves them 
more of a superior, higher priced food for market, or more land 
to produce marketable provisions from ; and what they save in 
their diet goes into their purse. Thus the very same cause, this 
cheap article of diet, produces thrifty, active, industrious habits 
among the Swiss, Tuscan, and French peasants, and lazy, trifling, 
lazaroni habits among the labourers of the Neapolitan, Papal, 
and Sardinian states. It is the possession of property that re- 
gulates the standard of living in a country, as in a single house- 
hold, and fixes the general ideas and habits, with regard to the 
necessary, or suitable, in diet, lodging, and clothing : and this 
standard regulates the wages of labour. People who have at 
home some kind of property to apply their labour to, will not 
sell their labour for wages that do not afford them a better diet 
than potatoes or maize, although in saving for themselves, they 
may live very much on potatoes and maize. We are often sur- 
prised in travelling on the Continent, to hear of a rate of day's 
wages very high considering the abundance and cheapness of 
food. It is want of the necessity or inclination to take work 
that makes labour scarce, and considering the price of provi- 
sions, dear in many parts of the Continent, where property in 
land is widely diffused among the people. 

Italy is a country of contrasts, of finery and rags tacked to- 
gether ; but none of its contrasts strike the political economist 
so much as the difference between Florence and Pome. All 
around Pome, and even within its walls, reigns a funereal si- 



]( I of 

men, do f a popal 

: rill 

v hum of men. 
.vn. Bho] 

I tlirivii. 
in full ) & The labouring wrell 

stalls in bird-rate 

■Her must couch; 
I and at their case. The I 
liiiL' er his loom. The m 

he magnificent galleri 
i collection in the Pitti palao 
. the h>v, of this 6 

art, show that intellectual 
with taste in the fine arts — the onl; ctual enj 

ea on th 

■ who d>> not belong to tl. 

Lment, d< reli- 

vridely diffu 

■ rally col 

of this kind of i nch well 

Maj ■ holiday bj 

kind of 

a in 

and \ il- 

eum raid not I I in 

1 did n< 

. 

ings 

innumerable i all Idnda and cla 

p their files, and their uv, 



254 TUSCANY. 

gave a favourable impression of the state of the lower classes in 
Tuscany. 

But why should the physical and moral condition of this po- 
pulation be so superior to that of the Neapolitans, , or of the 
neighbouring people in the Papal states ? The soil and climate 
and productions are the same in all these countries. The differ- 
ence must be accounted for by the happier distribution of the 
land in Tuscany.. In 1836, Tuscany contained 1,436,785 inhabi- 
tants, and 130,190 landed estates. Deducting 7,901 estates be- 
longing to towns, churches, or other corporate bodies, we have 
122,289 belonging to the people — or, in other words, 48 fami- 
lies in every 100 have land of their own to live from. Can the 
striking difference in the physical aud moral condition, and in 
the standard of living, between the people of Tuscany and those 
of the Papal states be ascribed to any other cause ? The taxes 
are as heavy in Tuscany as in the dominions of the Pope ; about 
12s. 6d. sterling per head of the population in the one, and 
12s. lOd. in the other. But in the whole Maremma of Rome, 
of about 30 leagues in length by 10 or 12 in breadth, Mons. 
Chateauvieux reckons only 24 factors, or tenants of the large 
estates of the Poman nobles. From the frontier of the Neapo- 
litan to that of the Tuscan state, the whole country is reckoned 
to be divided in about 600 landed estates. Compare the hus- 
bandry of Tuscany, the perfect system of drainage, for instance, 
in the strath of Arno by drains between every two beds of land, all 
connected with a main drain — being our own lately introduced 
furrow tile-draining, but connected here with the irrigation as 
well as the draining of the land, — compare the clean state of the 
growing crops, the variety and succession of green crops for fod- 
dering cattle in the house all the year round, the attention to 
collecting manure, the garden-like cultivation of the whole face 
of the country, compare these with the desert waste of the Ro- 
man Maremma, or with the papal country of soil and produc- 
tiveness as good as that of the vale of the Arno, the country 
about Foligno and Perugia, compare the well-clothed, busy peo- 
ple, the smart country girls at work about their cows' food, or 
their silkworm leaves, with the ragged, sallow, indolent popula- 
tion lounging about their doors in the papal dominions, starv- 
ing, and with nothing to do on the great estates ; nay, compare 
the agricultural industry and operations in this land of small 
farms, with the best of our large-farm districts, with Tweedside, 
or East Lothian — and snap your fingers at the wisdom of our 



• ri.r, 

id all t!;. ; i-uHun% 

who bleat after each other that solemn - bhriving- 

,nt i-y-t in . mall farms | ,\,]c 

with a high and | of cultivation. B 

land, ran produce no land t<> be oompared to I 

; h of the Arno, d ductiveneas, 

depends upon soil and climate, which we 

quality to compare, but for industry and intelli pplied to 

husbandry, for perfect drainage, for i den-like 

culture for cL an of land, 

I tbour, or mannr 

dition of the labouring eul bich 

admit of tmpared between one farm and another; in the 

most distinct soils and climates. Our rms will 

i nothing in such a comparison with the husbandry of 'I 
cany. 1 rland, under a system of small farn 

Next to the distribution of property, the comparative well- 
being of the lower class in Tuscany must be ascribed to the l 
ernment. The ducal family, for sumo generations, have ruh 
a liberal, paternal am The people have had no r 

tation in the legislature in a constitutional shape; but they have 
been ably represented by their grand dukes themseh lib- 

lie measures of it , good, and truly great sov< 

been ot a more decidedly liberal character, than any re] 

-hit are in Italy — taking into account tin ; the 

repr es e ntatives, the influence of the priesthood, and the jealousy 
of Austria of any shadoM fcitutional power vested in the 

Italian people — could have ventured upon. 'Idle feudal privi- 

; he nobl LunicipaJ or corporation privileges \\ bich 

shackle the freedom of industry and trade, the restraints on civil 
liberty which in other parts of Europe keep the working produo- 

thraldom to the government and 

ctionaries, have been long mitigated or abolished in ] 
by tin- libera] sovereigns who, by rare good fortune, have ruled 
in succession for three generations, on the same enlightened and 
beneficent principles. But stability of good lai 
ernment. depending upon the personal i r of cue man 

.stake of fearful maun it nde. when the well-being of a who! 

ends upon it. t hie ill ed 
undo, and is undoing, under the present ruler, all the good 
predecessors have planned or accomplished. Capital, commei 
manufacturing indust ncies in the movement of 



256 IN TUSCANY. 

modern society, will not trust themselves freely upon so unstable 
a foundation. This will ever be the impediment to any consider- 
able progress of Prussia. Austria, Tuscany, and all the paternally 
governed bufc autocratic states, in the development of the in- 
dustry of their people. The'-prosperity, national wealth, and 
public spirit they aim at, are tinseparable from free institutions, 
and legislative power lodged with the people themselves, and in- 
dependent of the life or will of an individual It would be a 
great misfortune to civilized Europe, if Prussia, with an auto- 
cratic government in which the public has no legal influence over 
the executive and its functionaries, were to. attain any consider- 
able manufacturing and commercial prosperity among nations. 
But this prosperity is so linked with that public confidence which 
can exist only in states in which the people have constitutional 
checks by their own representatives upon the acts of the govern- 
ment, that such a prosperity is unattainable by such a state as 



f 



. 



El XIX 

<m . ..n | • :cE. 

Thr road from Flora 

iid from some points, thr thr pen- 

insula may be descried. The mountain scenery of I mine 

chain, i- by no means grand, pic 

ation of the hills ; 
main unmelted a groat part of the gammer; but they are covered 
with a thick bed of clay soil in general, and the breaks i 

of clay, the rai and valleys of a 

Lay country , are Beldom picturesque. In bher, 

bracts of country with fine natural scenery are rare. 

with anci 
and the luxuriant ion, and delicious climate, 

charms of Italy. The inhabitant- i Bologn.i 

ike of the wretchedness and indolence of the subjects of the 
papa] states on the other side of the Appenines. They are evi- 
dently in a. better condition. The land is more divided among 
the people iii the legations of I . (ferrara, Ravenna, F 

than in the old, original territory of the pa] . in which the 

Roman pontiffs, and the princely families derived from them, are 
th<> landowners. The people, also, had >>titutional rig 

inner tim 
The city of T> ! remarkable from having an arched 

: lie streets, a 

i northern i 
under cover, but the effect is i my. The climate 

rainy on this side of the Appenines, as ail the cities have some of 

principal of their old red in on each side, Fer- 

d city of inhabitants dwelling 

town built for 100,000. nit. houses out ^i 

ir, weatc od a world too large tor their pre 

the 
but a li 

• lively, with its un" . 

S 



258 NOTES ON VENICE. 

Venice, " the city risen from the sea," is the point to which the 
traveller hastens. It is perhaps the only city in the world which 
does not disappoint his expectations. It is, indeed, a dream-like 
creation upon the waters. . Gondolas meet . you at Fusina or 
Mestre, where you leave the carriage, to . ferry you across to 
Venice, a distance of about four miles over a shallow lagune, in 
which the water-road is marked out by large piles. The gondo- 
la is a wherry, not so neatly built as the Thames wherry, with 
the upper half of a mourning hackney-coach, such as our under- 
takers send out in the rear of a burial train, stuck midships. In 
this the passengers sit, or recline on cushions, and may shut 
themselves up as in a coach with the glass-windows or the blinds. 
Two fellows at opposite ends and sides of the boat, stand shoving 
the oars from them, and paddle along pretty quickly, avoiding 
the running foul of the other gondolas with great dexterity, it is 
said, but, in truth, there has been no great danger of running foul 
of others in the most frequented canals of Venice, in this nine- 
teenth century. In turning corners they might possibly bump 
against each other, and they give a short cry, to warn those 
coming down the water street to keep to the right or left. The 
gondolier has nothing of the seaman about him, and out of his 
own ditches, would, I suspect, be found a sorry boatman, for the 
boat-part of his conveyance is not so neat, nor so well kept as the 
coach part. Venice is not without her streets. There is access 
by land to every house in Venice. Thousands of little alleys, 
like Cranbourne Alley in London, but not so wide, and bridges 
innumerable, make the landways not even very circuitous, and 
the great mass of the population go about their daily business 
as in other towns, through the streets. The gondolas are but 
the equivalents of the hackney-coaches of other cities. I ques- 
tion if a greater proportion of the 100,000 people living in the 
Tower Hamlets, Ratcliffe, Poplar, and on either side of the 
Thames in that district, be not upon the water in any given 
minute of the day, than of this 100,000 people. The lower 
classes, and even the gondoliers, have by no means the air of a 
seafaring or even of an aquatic population. Our London boatmen, 
even those who ply above bridge, have all something jack-tarrHi 
about them. You would never mistake the man who lives by 
his boat among us, for a terrestrial biped. Here, even about the 
dock-yard, or in the boats of the guardship, a frigate, you do not 
see a man in gait and appearance like a seaman. But for the 
anchor in their caps, the men of their ship-of-war might be taken 






linns of the kable. I 

tidier, the sailor, the husbandman, th- 
;li. the shoemaker, the mechanic, the gentl 
(nothing about them not I 
y<m will, an appearance, i 

! t is expressed, or I painting 

Dutch or ' 
nothing of I 

by his a] nish 

the Boldier from I It is \ 

thing in the appearanc in Bach i; I 

populations. What is thu \ng I I 

applied I 

thinking, 
of the individual, and making him brother-like to all 
icupation. I in which 

industry i- r i a living, the mind, the will. 

the bod; atly 

ruliar to 
the crafl \ by which the indivi 

r the ordinal ; 
! tO all. 

e very clean for < 

. 
and fall of ti i »f about 

that here 

'•lj and J: 

. runs 

. 
land. uns in 1»\ 

i tl- 

on 
I 
ry deep all round, and clo 
here by layii ,ud hank 

lilt appn the littl 
ring the:; b her building 



2 GO NOTES ON VENICE. 

truly described as a city springing from the waters. No natural 
land is to be seen — all is water or wall. It is possible that 
some individuals here may be strangers to the ordinary appear- 
ances of animal and vegetable life in the country, may never have 
seen growing corn, nor heard the lark singing, and know not 
what the country means. 

Whoever regrets the decay of Venice, the extinction of her 
independence as a state, regrets the advance of society from bar- 
barism to civilisation. The Republic of Yenice was a huge com- 
pound of all the evil principles of a social condition collected 
together under an oligarchy. Despotism, intolerance, mutual 
distrust among those wielding the power, disregard of the people, 
cruelty, secrecy, terrorism, all the extreme evils of bad govern- 
ment, were united here It has passed away, and even the relics 
of its former greatness are rapidly decaying — the palaces, quays, 
bridges. In some future age, the traveller may be inquiring, 
Where stood Yenice ? The port of this queen of the seas has at 
present in it two foreign brigs, a government guard-ship, and some 
small craft. The appearance of Yenice is probably more 
novel and impressive now in her decay, than in her best days. 
When her port was crowded with vessels, her canals with light- - 
ers conveying goods, her quays with merchandise, she may have 
been very like some parts of Amsterdam, or other great commer- 
cial cities penetrated by canals. In her present state, she is 
unique, because it is not the movement of a seaport or commer- 
cial town upon her waters, but the ordinary communications of 
her own inhabitants with each other. Shipping and trade are 
not seen in it. The coasting trade of Venice, however, in small 
craft, is not inconsiderable. The very supply of 1 15,000 people, a 
strong garrison, a naval depot, and a host of public functionaries 
employed in the civil government of the district, with every article, 
even to the fresh water they use, must employ many market boats 
and small craft. Foreign trade at all times has only been forced 
into this channel ; and its present course, by which consumers in 
this part of Europe receive their supplies through Trieste, a port 
nearer to them and to the producers, with more convenience and 
saving of time for shipping, is undoubtedly more natural arid ad- 
vantageous. We see with regret the decay of ancient power and 
magnificence ; but where these were founded on monopoly and 
oppression, and when we see the supplies of the necessaries and 
comforts of life better, cheaper, and more widely diffused through 
society by the downial of this grandeur and power, we may dry 



of "V 

iniquitous in principl 

of til.- old \ 
strong li V o&trian, 

amtic, uncontrolled oj 
ruli: mtrolled | 

• liis formerly dominao : all 

equal and know d law, and 

in tl. ipid, but still i 

ble i le and c 

I vrful ut f nubility wit 

ing city, he ry little 

: while 1 

- through (Fl >. arc full 

. ill cloth 
idle. Whal this striki 

nice I Mendicit; 
here, the a ho hai e 

in which 

himself with who 

could relieve him. B and idler lent 

: ; ion of this insulated populati 

Thei ■ no man ;• the low 

v 5 

i >f all question hi 

1 the millions of rai 
•1 with these found in oth 
from Venice. Th r- 

beyond a fixed, well-a 

labouring me 
tain n<» delui 

I supernumerary I 

on board the goo 1 ship Venice, and i 
Call into it, 1 

to k( upon, The 



262 NOTES ON VENICE. 

working class can take in the whole field of labour in this simple 
state, with no manufactures, no foreign trade, and no agricul- 
ture, and can see that there is no room for him to many. Venice 
is a striking example of the economical preventive check upon 
over-population ; and not working from any superior prudence 
or intelligence of the lower class, but from the greater simplicity 
of the social relations in which they live, enabling the most 
thoughtless to see and calculate upon his means of subsistence. 
It proves, too, that the check upon over-population is to be found 
in the intelligence and education of the working class, in raising 
their habits and wants to those gratifications which property 
only can indulge in, and in raising their mental power to the 
understanding, and acting upon those considerations which are 
the same in the most complicated forms of society as in the sim- 
ple form in Venice, although not so obvious to the common man 
of uneducated mind. 

One evening there was a grand illumination in one of the 
parishes in the centre of Venice in honour of the pastor, who had 
completed the fiftieth year, of his service in the parish church. 
It was, like every thing in Venice, with a touch of the Eastern 
style. Carpets, or silk cloths of brilliant colours, were hung out 
from every window, and across the streets. Every shop had its 
grandest and most Gostly goods piled up outside, and in the doors 
and windows. Crystal chandeliers, those used in drawing-rooms, 
with lighted wax candles, were suspended on gaily painted rods 
across, between the houses, so as to hang over the centre of the 
narrow flag-paved alleys of the town; and in these, the throng 
of well-dressed people of the middle and lower classes was im- 
mense. There was no pushing, or elbowing, or rudeness in the 
dense mass, although crowded beyond any fashionable London 
squeeze. A military band of an Hungarian regiment played op- 
posite the parish church. We took a gondola up the grand 
canal, and landed at the Bialto, from whence our gondolier piloted 
us through dark lanes, so narrow that two persons could scarcely 
pass each other, until we reached the centre of the show, where 
the band was playing, dressed in their Hungarian costume. 
The scene was splendid. The narrow streets lined, and canopied 
with gay coloured cloths, and silks, and glittering goods ; the 
wax lights, the glass chandeliers, and the well-dressed crowd, 
appeared a scene from the Arabian Nights' Entertainments rea- 
lised. In all this bustle, I did not see, even in the fishmarket at 
the Rial to, a single instance of intoxication — people were not 



drinking, although all wer 

poshing, running, or rudeness, m whom 

to he a p ird, at a 

public building near the chvro) ily authority I 

any kind. 1 doubt if the Austria alar 

with 

item, The old buildings, like 
St. V; ;,-, In a style 

blj from Constantinople, 
iliar. They prefer str vivid colours* This 

is al (Tenetian school of painting The s 

climate and situation of Venice naturally pr 

:' brilliant liu r ht and deep shade. 1 

imp; 

tin*' rilent, narrow w plunge int.- 

do* .. ater on e 

i all is pitchy din. a small - 

bead, or a light glimmering >vy window, and you 

suddenly, by a turn of the canal, into a brilliant flood of 
moonlig] and dancing on waters and building 

lech. In general, however, I pi land pat^i 

_ : i i t y of I Idled about i 

dola. I like to rub shoulders with the people — to hear tl. 
i in the market-] >, 
The style of building in the old houses on the canals 
liar. Small, beautiful l pillars, with windoi <en, 

and arches joining them with much open P 1 omani- 

run in belts round the buildings j and the main story 1 
and oovere I colonnaded ha. 
indas of 

. must have been UX>ni the line eut- 

5 of pillars and fret- work ; and now, many 

mansion! or palaces are uninhabited, or tei pari bj the 

]»le. wh( ' tO 

dry , over balustrades which once half concealed the silk-n 
ladies of high degree, who sat listening behind them in the I 

. t . well-known strains of music from the a 
dola whi I not lii.. cia mundi Our 

gondolier ] » un t< | ofl his habitation on the 

and at his >ignal-whi-th\ his little one- ran out on the ball 

of the DJSt fl hap- 



264: NOTES ON VENICE. 

pier, perhaps, that he was earning eighteen-penee, than ever were 
the progeny of the Venetian noble who built the palace, in all 
their magnificence. His rent, he told us, was three dollars a 
month for five rooms and a cellar; but it was dear in consequence 
of the convenience of the situation. In remote canals, a zwan- 
ziger, two-thirds of a franc, per week, is the ordinary rent for 
labouring people. Their fuel for a year will cost sixty zwanziger. 
I he hire of a gondola for a day is six zwanziger. There is honour 
among these gondoliers; for although needy and clamorous for 
fares, and we had no fixed engagement with our man, yet if he 
was out of the way, they would call him to come to his usual 
customers, and took no advantage of his absence. There are in 
.Venice about 200 gondolas plying for hire. The buildings in 
Venice are not in general so lofty as in Genoa, and other Italian 
cities. St, Mark's is a low structure, so is the palace of the doge, 
and the adjoining old prison connected with it by a covered 
bridge — the bridge of sighs — from the upper story of the one 
building to that of the other. These are all low structures, that 
is, the proportion of the height to the extent of front, is not 
greater than in Grecian architecture, and, therefore, they are not 
to be classed with the Gothic. Venice probably borrowed her 
style of building from Constantinople, when she was mistress of 
the East. Some of the old mansions in the secondary canals are 
very interesting, from the peculiar style of architecture and orna- 
Hien 

It is the predominating characteristic, and distinctive principle 
of Gothic architecture to seek its effects by extensions in the 
height ; and that of Grecian architecture, on the contrary, to 
Seek its effects by extensions parallel to the horizon. These 
two distinct principles will be found to govern all the details, as 
well as the general masses, of each of these two distinct styles of 
architecture — the arches, gates, windows, fronts, interiors — to 
run through all their parts, and to govern the whole ideal of the 
structure in every pure and complete specimen of either style. 



: ; 






CHAPTER XX. 

Wi set off with \ • 

in li 

climate, the i mp, raw. and on 

but i 

I • dampness, that - 

Us at t'; 

•s upon the 
- in the sea. It was ebb-tide, and bl 
r than usual; and we 

I, laid dry at low water — 
built on. Venice being a fr in which - ded 

the same kind of search - if it w< 

'.in. We ftran I th( "'dicers not more troul * nan 

rn custom-houses. From lua you 

.." 

the Po, run upon t!i»- c • ntiy, rather than i it ; for 

: > >ve the land. T 
▼ill tlta arc like I 

f nymp] 

a p .. iy with < 

dde of the bed of the yellow thi 
el. Of 
the ' will find a much more delightful as* 

u il from I 

on the I 

the bush. 



266 ITALIAN TOWNS. 

From Padua, the traveller passes through Vicenza, Verona, 
Brescia, Bergamo, on his way to Milan, these are all large towns ; 
shrunk, indeed, from their original girth of wall ; but still towns 
of from 30,000 to 60,000 inhabitants, situated at short distances 
from each other, and with no particular manufacture or branch 
of industry established in them. How do these city masses 
of population live ? The country is fertile. Its products are 
amongst the most valuable of the earth, corn, rice, wine, oil, silk, 
fruits. The rents of the land, whether paid in money or in 
portions of the products of the soil, are spent in the cities, and 
also all the public revenues, if we look at the country we see 
what supports the towns, the people are in poverty in the 
country, notwithstanding the fertility of the soil. It is impres- 
sive to see those who raise silk — the most costly material of 
human clothing — going about their work barefoot, and in rags. 
The inhabitants of Lombardy, and the other Austrian possessions 
in Italy, are far from being in so good a condition as the people of 
Tuscany ; but are in a much better condition than the people of 
the Papal and Neapolitan States. The houses are good, although 
scantily furnished, and displaying no such quantity of plenish- 
ing as in the dwellings of the Swiss or French peasantry — no 
stocks of bedding, household linen, eai'thenware, pewter, copper, 
and iron utensils. 

The homeless out-of-door way of living of the labouring class 
all over Italy is a cause as well as an effect of poverty. It blunts 
the feeling for domestic comfort, which is a powerful stimulus to 
steady industry. People of the working class here, breakfast 
out ; that is, take a cup of coffee, or something equivalent, at a 
stall or coffee-room. It is only in large towns with us, that the 
workman or labourer does not take his meals at home, or from 
his home ; and the traveller is surprised to see trattoria and 
coffee rooms in Italy, not merely in towns, but in lonely country 
situations where there are only a few houses of the labouring 
people. This is not an indication, as it would be considered 
with us, that the people of the neighbourhood are well off, and 
have something to spend in such gratifications as public places 
of resort for their class afford ; but it is an indication of their 
poverty. Those who with us would have their own little house- 
keepings and cooking, have not the means, nor perhaps the 
taste for such domestic comfort, and take their victuals at the 
trattoria, or cook-shop. The number of such places of enter- 
tainment for the lower class in little villages and hamlets which 



LIVE 

do such trade in cmr country, pass 
bis apparent surplus oi 
■ with the visible • be inhabitani 

onomy of poverty, no4 the expend 
means of gratification, which su] 

more economical way of living in this climate, in which firiw - 
1 for comfort, than if each family of the 1 
- had a houa j for itself P»ut the domw 

■ bis homeless, thou 
of living, and the time saved by it is not employed. The 

sauntering about all day on the gossip, with their distaff and 
lie, the ! ran, 

slumbering in the shade. 

of climate, soil, fertility, and other natural circutn* 
c >untrv. upon the habits, morals, and civilisation of 
tiif people, would be s curious udatkm, and 

which would explain many apparent difficulties : - for 

very different prog different nations. The di 

for example, in the condition and civilisation of dan and 

bish people is very remarkable, and may bund 

and situation. The climate and Bofl of 1 

ire incomparably more productive than th bain. 

The population of the two countries is about equal — the island of 

tritain in 1831, having 1 , 6,262,301 inhabitants, and 
peninsula of Italy 15 3 Both countries are inhabited 

much the same way. that is, in a great numl 
cities ai 

the Italian population is unquestionably far behind 
die British in the enjoyments of civilised life, in the useful i 
in civil ami political liberty, in wealth, intt I industry, and 

in their moral condition. To what can this 
Ita . r advaih r m many point- this 

— 1»« fore Bngland ha I ion ; 

and wl, 

* " Quid loqui e in hisei 

ruins in Gallia viderim S. i 
human is vesci carnibns, el quum | udumqne 

riant, tamen pastoni I foeminartim papilla 

ft b ibornm deliciai arbitrari!" Evidei 

stabliahing facts, w 
be bim* ither entitled to r not entitled to credit 1 

whal b* >\ the chnr 

such authority 



268 DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ITALIANS AND ENGLISH. 

Englishman ascribes this to the want of constitutional govern- 
ment ; the Scotchman to the want of pure religious doctrine. 
The government and religion of a foreign country are two very- 
convenient pack-horses for the traveller. They trot along the 
road with him, carrying all that he cannot otherwise conveniently 
dispose of, and the prejudices of his readers prevent any doubt of 
the burthen being laid upon the right beast. But, in reality, no 
government of the present day, whatever be its form, is so igno- 
rant of sound principle, so blind to its own interests, and so im- 
pregnable to public opinion, as wilfully to keep back, discourage, 
or attempt to put down industry and civilisation. It is in the 
means they use, not in the end they propose, that modern go- 
vernments, whether despotic or liberally constituted, differ from 
each other; and for many objects, even the means of the despoti- 
cally governed states are, in themselves, better — are a more 
effective machinery, than those of the constitutional states. The 
despotic countries of Europe — Austria, Prussia, Denmark, for 
instance, are actually in advance of the constitutionally governed 
— Britain, Erance, Belgium, in the means or machinery for dif- 
fusing education among the people. Where they err, is in doing 
too much for the promotion of education, manufactures, and com- 
merce, and not leaving the plants to their natural growth, and 
not leaving the people to themselves — to their own social man- 
agement — to their own natural tendency to extend the cultiva- 
tion of them in exact proportion of their wants; but are inces- 
santly applying the hand of government to foster the crop to a 
sickly maturity. As to religion, the Popish, practically interferes 
less with the time and industry of the people, than the Presbyte- 
rian. One half of Sunday only is kept as a time of rest in 
Popish lands, and that not very strictly in agricultural labour; 
and in seed time, harvest, vintage, and hay-making, people in 
Catholic countries generally labour in the fields after mass, that 
is, after twelve at noon, nor is it considered indecorous to do so. 
Holydays, or Saints' days, are also practically observed only until 
the forenoon mass is over. Of these, before the French revolu- 
tion, there were sixteen days in Paris yearly; but tw T enty-ibur 

self saw of those Scotch cannibals ; viz., that when they found herds of 
swine and cattle in the woods, they preferred a slice of the hips of the keep- 
ers, or the breasts of the female attendants on the herds, to the beef and 
pork, proves too much. People who keep flocks and herds of cattle and 
swine, and tend them in the woods, are not in the social condition to eat 
each other for want of food or of civilisation. 



until n 1. a* church holydays. h 

gland, the < I 
powder I 
r idle ens 

1 md, it' •. pro- 

tied by tl i; tin* preparation-days for the 

ind "v half-d 

nary boci 
. and all the i 
the f the individual, it will be 

the 
pious well-conducted Pree workman 

stable middle-class man in 

rking hours in the yea» upon i*» 1 1 _r : 
cerns than the Papist in Italy. It is an inoonai 
lo tiif loea of time by th 
and idleness of the p ipnlatione 

:' in- 
dustry for n ; i little, if at .-J'. 
amount producing no such imp* nejudicia] 
on the oontfc lently invi 

limiting r morality and ch 

in truth) 
£ion jr, whiob keep her behind the otl 

Fin" 
. and an al 
Land, render each man too independent of 
industry <>f his fellow-men. Italy hat un- 

i which I 

ilation d j. from oa ion, 

-no highland and loi 
pulatiom product 

/ population, and 
■ r npoo 

natu] 

■ ;, win*', oil. silk fruit 



270 CAUSES OF THE DIFFERENCE. 

consumer is a producer : and there is no natural capability in 
the country of raising an artificial division in its population by 
trade or manufacture. The great source of industry and civili- 
sation in France, is the cultivation of the vine, and its natural 
exclusion from all the north of France. It is the greatest manu- 
facture in the world. It not only gives within France itself a con- 
stant interchange of industry for industry, as the country north of 
Paris produces no wine ; but all the north of Europe, all America, 
all the world where Christians dwell, consume wines of French 
production. Italy has not this advantage. With her equal, or 
nearly equal productiveness of soil and climate over all, both in 
the kinds and quantities of her products, no considerable masses 
of her population are depending on each other's industry for the 
supply of their mutual wants, and inseparably bound up with 
each other by common interests. Italy has no natural capabili- 
ties of raising up such a division in the masses of her population 
by manufacturing or commercial industry. There is little com- 
mand of water-power, and none of fire-power, in the Italian 
peninsula for moving machinery. The Po, the Adige, the Tecino. 
and all the Alpine rivers ; the Tiber, the Arno, and all from the 
Apennines, owing to the melting of the snow at their main 
sources, partake of the character of mountain-streams, having 
such difference of level at different seasons, that mill-seats on their 
banks, at which water-power can be always available, are ex- 
tremely rare. The corn mills on those rivers are constructed on 
rafts or boats anchored in the stream, so as to rise and fall with 
the increase or decrease of the water. Italy also, notwithstand- 
ing her vast extent of sea coast, is badly situated for commercial 
industry, or supporting a seafaring population. She has little 
coasting trade, because all parts of her territory produce nearly 
the same articles in sufficient abundance for the inhabitants, and 
has little trade, for the same reason, with the other countries, on 
the Mediterranean. Her sea coast, also, is in general uninhabi- 
table from malaria ; so that no great mass of population deriving 
the means of living from commercial industry, and distinct from 
the inland population, can ever be formed. Cities and towns 
are, no doubt, numerous in Italy, and, perhaps, so many masses 
of population of from fifty or sixty thousand persons, down to 
two or three thousand, cannot be found any where else in Europe, 
within so small an area as in the plains, of this peninsula. But 
these cities and towns are of a very peculiar character. The 
country is so fertile, that each of these masses of population 






271 

draws its buI rom, and i 

small circle beyond it 

liit* I civil authority, and business, pa blie or private; all 

■ . manufactui md 

ifacture, and it may l>< k said, all ch 
within bb >mntry around 1 1 

. which they draw the tnsumpi. 1 

striking example of the practical « 

'ii in I 

lth 

for it • family 

own farm, an o with, 

in tl. 

. by carriers, « 

. m. 'i 
WCt Within the 
Ithy, imbued with for 

and inspired with liberal i mJ 

tl independence of their country; 

n<l 
vilisatic; . rude, poor, half-civil' 

town, woollen cloaks, 

shau llyi'ul, withe wish for naii- 

highe 

nu- 
ial indua ally 

i which depend u 
around, and, in i 
much gr 

but nol for the m 
tioD 

leaving on the land I 
roduce n< 

a populations. The princ b, nobi 
where the land i 
try, i : i higl 
govern neral, with their armies of tund 



2 4 '2 CAUSES OF THE DIFFERENCE. 

live in the towns and cities with the tradesmen who live by* 
supplying them. The traffic between town and country is small, 
because there are no consumers in the country ; its produce is 
consumed in the towns without any return. The interchange 
of industry between town and town is still less, for each popula- 
tion is a little state within itself, sufficing within its own circle 
for all its demands, and hampered, besides, with all sorts of im- 
pediments to communication, with passports, town duties, custom- 
house examinations, and formalities at the town gates. Italy is 
dotted over with these separate and distinct masses of population, 
forming, no whole of powder, wealth, connected industry, common 
interests, objects, or feelings, and this state of disunion in the 
social economy of the Italian people is, I apprehend, the effect of 
natural, not of political causes. Nature having bestowed almost 
equally over all the inhabitable land of Italy all that man re- 
quires in a low, but not uncomfortable condition, neutralises by her 
very bounty the main element of social union — the dependence 
of men upon the interchange with each other of the products of 
their industry. Man is cemented to man by mutual wants. 
Social union, national spirit, interests, and industry exist only in 
masses of people living by each other. Identity of language, re- 
ligion, laws, government, will not, as we see in Germany, amal- 
gamate into one nation populations having no want of each other 
in their ordinary modes of existence, no dependence on each 
other for the necessaries or enjoyments of life. This disunion 
appears to have been in all ages the state of the groups of popu- 
lations on the Italian peninsula. The power of the sword in the 
time of the Romans ; the power of commercial capital in the mid- 
dle ages ; the power of the sword again in the days of Napoleon 
compressed Italy, or distinct portions of Italy, into national masses 
in form and government ; but w r hen the pressure was removed, 
the parts started asunder again ; the cement was wanting which 
holds men together in effective national union ; viz. their mutual 
wants, and the exchange of industry against industry, to supply 
mutual wants. They are a people living, each family for itself, 
in a remarkably unconnected social state, even in the same com- 
munities, and without need of, or confidence in each other; and, 
as communities, unimbued with any common feeling or spirit 
that can be called national. This has ever been so. The earliest 
period of Roman history shows Italy in the same state of social 
economy as at the present hour. The bounty of nature enables 



in*, and K 

ountry in Europe, 

an»i 

which the comm< 

Flon n laid o 

. 
well- r industry 

rich 
chin 

the | oned tli. 

with . their marb] 

■ m< rJts, paini : 
simple of the haul of the Italian 

us outlay of c luc- 

tive 1 in at the va 

their ornamental . their mi 

. and all 

>WH 

in Italy, hut particularly in I bioh 

much I 
All tjiis 

ill of th< 

hich 

hi. 

ji iy. 1 1 ap] 

ehi; 



274 ox EXPENDITURE, 

It is only a transfer of capital, in both cases, from those who 
buy labour to those who sell labour, and the capital, although it 
may be lost by the one individual, is gained by the other, and 
cannot be said to be sunk, or lost to the country, in the one ap- 
plication of it more than in the other. This is the view of 
many political economists : but it is not correct. Suppose two 
merchants build each a ship at the cost of 15,0001. The sum is 
paid to wood merchants, rope and sail makers, carpenters, rig- 
gers, and others, for labour, or material of which the value con- 
sists in the labour of producing and transporting it. At this 
step there is no loss of capital, but only an exchange of it be- 
tween those who buy labour, or its products, and those who sell 
it. The nation or community gains by the circulation, as new 
objects, the two vessels, are produced by the labour. But sup- 
pose one of these vessels is kept well employed for a dozen years. 
She reproduces her cost, the 1 5,0001 This is capital laid out 
reproductively. It is laid out again and again, and employs and 
remunerates labour and industry from generation to generation. 
Suppose the other vessel is made an habitation of, laid up by 
the side of a canal, and converted into a Venetian palace. Tier 
cost is unreproductive : it is capital sunk and lost as far as re- 
gards national wealth, and well-being, and employment of labour, 
having acted only once in the labour market, and having then 
been totally withdrawn from it. This has been precisely the 
case with an incalculable amount of capital, not only in Italy, 
but in the Hanse towns, in Flanders, in Holland, in all the old 
seats of European commerce and wealth. In visiting those an- 
cient cities, which once were, in the trade of the world, what 
London, Liverpool, Bristol, Glasgow, are now, the traveller sees 
that the besetting error of commercial wealth, in the ages and 
countries which preceded England and her rise, has been to over- 
build and over-display itself in unreproductive objects, instead 
of retaining their capitals as working means, or capitals, in trade 
or manufactures. Wealth acquired in commerce, properly so 
called, that is, in the transport of products, natural or artificial, 
from one country to another, seems to have a tendency to ex- 
pand itself unreproductively, to overstep its prudent limits and 
true interests, not only in private dwellings and gratifications, 
but even in works of undeniable utility, as in cutting and fac- 
ing harbours and canals, building quays, piers, town walls, cita- 
dels, town houses, churches, and in our days in docl s, ware- 
houses, and railroads — all very useful works, but not always 



turing in 

I is 

Her 
Lth, 

the 

li<>v, of any 

be, civil, mili 

. and 1' 
f of our in: 
Lot empl rka of ti 

by indii i as 

in o 

are I a* pnbli 

pain rill the 

• not tii the 

but I | with a 

!v and el taa nana 

luaL 

1 1 mi 

m1 individ 

in i 
pou 

the 

be 

Obj< 

own facultie 



276 ON EXPENDITURE, 

proof of a want of intellectuality in a people. Be it so or not, 
it is undeniable that in the character of the people of Britain, 
even of the higher classes, there is no feeling for the fine arts, no 
foundation for them, no esteem for them. A single town in Italy 
or Germany could produce more show-edifices, more costly pa- 
laces, museums, picture galleries, and music saloons, than half the 
island of Great Britain. The wealth of some of the smaller Eu- 
ropean states, as for instance of Bavaria, Saxony, Denmark, Swe- 
den, and of all the little German principalities, has in modern 
times been almost entirely absorbed in building royal palaces, 
museums, theatres, and in lodging the nobility proportionably 
to their sovereigns. Royalty itself is poorly lodged in England 
in proportion to the wealth of the country, and to the palaces of 
many a little Continental prince; and the merchant in London or 
Liverpool, or the manufacturer in Manchester or Glasgow, lives 
in a modest cheap dwelling, compared to the vast magnificent 
palaces of the same classes in the middle ages, still to be seen in 
the old commercial cities of Italy and Elanders, and in the old 
Hanseatic cities all over the Continent, and which are literally 
the tombs of their commercial prosperity. In them are buried 
the means which would to this day have commanded the 
trade of the world, had these vast private capitals been still 
available by having been laid out reproductively in the industry- 
market, as the same class of capital has always been in England, 
instead of being buried in marble and mortar. In this English 
taste there is nothing to regret, nor is any want of intellectual 
employment in such a social existence to be justly complained 
of. " 






Mll.A.'. 



( maitf.!; XXI 

WOTRS 05 MII.\N. f OMO. ATSTHIVV OB. 

ISO, -THE ALl'S. — 

ITALY. 

The traveller tires of the plains of Lonibardy in an hour. Ho 
has i of country in this garden of Europe. Kvery 

field i^ beset with rows of pollard mulberry trees, plucked b 
of foliage for feeding the Bilk-worms, The field tally 

irrigated with clear water, carried in littl 
ami one or two BUch little fii ra of pollards suiTOUn 

them, and the endless straight • from city to city, m 

. uninten y. It is flat, tame, and without the 

character of nationality, which gives an interest to the li 

of Holland. The gay bustle of Milan, and the vieu 
luomo, with the forest of white marble pinn 
— the most beautiful roof-scenery in the world — will scarcely re- 
pay lull duty of approaching them though 
di<>u> avenue of stiff ti\ nting, mile ai 
me, 
osiderable town at the foot of the pictur- 
ie name, a town ofl2,< ' iuhahi- 
The population of the neighbouring country 

I Uing pedlars wh into 

the worl and such 

families.and return with their littl* ada 

• fland. at ten times what we would • the \ ah: 

of their natii 
a thisdisl 

ble wealth. They are a \ 

• of the condition r classes, 

in many difl 

ten, well i « itli. 

The m the practical d I 

i. paternal governor 



278 AUSTRIAN GOVERNMENT. 

mildest of autocratic states — Austria — and a government in 
which public opinion lias its due influence through a constitu- 
tional means of expressing it. It cannot be doubted that it is 
with the best intentions, and from a supreme care for what is 
considered the public good, that the Austrian government holdsthe 
people in a state of moral vassalage, treats them as beings in a state 
of pupilage, not as free agents, and governs all things by the will 
and wisdom of a ruling few. The ruling few, however, cannot be 
wise in all things, are often duped by those below them in execu- 
tive or administrative function, on whom they must depend for 
sound information, and are duped, too, by their own social position, 
by the esprit of function arism, the esprit des bureaux, which is so 
apt to mistake the perfection of the means for the perfection of the 
end in public affairs. They have no wish to legislate wrong, but 
they legislate on guess, not upon knowledge. The ruling class are 
too far removed from the ordinary business and interest of the mul- 
titude working below them, to understand personally the busi- 
ness of that multitude; and are bred in a circle of ideas widely 
different from that of the classes for whom they legislate. They 
necessarily depend for their ideas and opinions upon the army of 
civil functionaries with whom alone they can communicate. 
These must appear to have something to do for their bread, and 
their bread perhaps depends in part on fees, fines, and douceurs. 
Hence the miserable policy of the Austrian, and all the other 
despotic states, of interfering in, managing, and watching over 
all private industry or enterprise, and all trade or individual ac- 
tion. The shop, the dwelling, the bed even of the trader, here 
in Austrian Italy, are exposed to vexatious examinations at the 
will of the local douanier — a half military German animal. The 
market cart going into a town with hay is probed with an iron 
rod at the town gate, in case it should be conveying goods subject 
to duty. The gig, or country vehicle with market people is stop- 
ped and searched. The simple undertaking of running a Dili- 
gence daily from Milan to Como, and back, a distance of twenty 
miles, was considered too important a concern to be left to in- 
dividual enterprise ; % and was taken possession of as a branch of 
public business, which it belonged to government functionaries 
only to carry on. It is with extreme difficulty the petty trader 
can get passports from the Austrian authorities, to travel on his 
needful affairs. Securities must be given, and *the causes of his 
going explained, even when his military or other public duties 
are accomplished, or fully provided for, and his station in life too 



. 






low, to make him in e of the 

Han <>t" i --are 

in America and wsb returning from i vi-it r 
travelled with me bj I ad. Jl- i 

emphatic ition, wh 

frontier, in speaking all Lndti in- 

to be - 

than alii 

Tli Comot darted all round by steep hill 

1 a villa ] 
the liiil and }>er- 

hape 

of rock 
mid b€ this hike are f led 

day :. by the sentinel vi- 

gila; 

Ghai 

tion el' all : It is 

of art, is about 
-mall wind mill. In tl la 

oily, 

It is . little V' I en- 

r in 
join 
the Simplon, rablime ii 

and alt; 

I 

Ai| : 



280 ISOLA BELLA. 

three thousand feet of elevation in our northern latitude and climate 
are far more imposing on the human mind, far more sublime. The 
positive elevation to which you have been climbing up perhaps from 
the pier of Bologne, or the quay of Naples, or the Lido of Yenice, 
enters not into the mind through the senses, but only on consid- 
eration, and as a cold mathematical truth. What strikes the 
mind on great mountain elevations is the sublime, almost ter- 
rific silence, suspension, death of nature, the lonely sterility, the 
absence of all animal or vegetable life, the reduction of all created 
objects to rock and cloud. This is felt in our northern latitude 
on hills of 2000 feet, more impressively than in this climate at 
4000 feet of elevation. The tree grows, the bird sings at the 
very edge of the perpetual snow here more vigorously than on 
many a northern sea-side plain. 



In passing through France, Prussia, Italy, the traveller re- 
turns daily to the question, How do the political institutions, 
the laws, mode of government, and national education of those 
countries act upon the social condition of the people ? To ascer- 
tain, or at least to approximate to a just estimate of these influ- 
ences in different parts of Europe, is the object of the preceding 
Notes. Will the reader concur in the following inferences from 
them 1 

The object of the governments of those countries must be the 
same as that of our own government — the advantage and well- 
being of the governed. The difference must be in the means 
used, not in the end proposed. 

But good legislation, which is the means used both by the 
despotic and liberal government for advancing the well-being of 
the people, is not confined to, or a necessary consequence of 
legislative power being vested in the representatives of the peo- 
ple. We have in Britain, both in our civil and criminal code, 
laws more absurd, unjust, and prejudicial to the interests and 
-well-being of the governed than the modern laws of any country 
in Europe ; for instance, our game laws, our excise laws, our 
poor laws, our corn laws, and other laws and classes of laws or 
even recent enactment, or recently revived. In the autocratic 
states, Prussia and Austria, in which the legislative power is 
solely in the executive, there are few subjects of legislation in 
which the executive has any interest at variance with, or dif- 
ferent from that of the people, or any favourable feeling towards 



prii i«>U 

11 civil, criminal, and ]• 

more in the | t as 

this truth may jound in i d — thai oon- 

ited or iV 

consul' tho 

law, 

vour 1 with tl 

I al- 
agh liabl tnisinforn und 

them, are unimp 

as in a popularly elected parliament, or 

There IS, thd 

rnment itself] 
enlig should nut 1. 

the social condition of a j 

and then no doubt, th 

Prussian autocrats in the beneficent paten ument which 

they affect, do sincerely endeavour to their legislative 

pow re God and man, for the well-being oftl 

The administration of law also, as well as tl 
be, and practically is, moi and peril 

civil and criminal courts, in the d< laii in tl 

The nature of de Imits of. and prod 

chain of precise, almost military arrangements for insj 
and reeponsibilitj running through th- 
trise of judicial function, from I 
The* illy ruled countri 

h witli its court, its judge, its publi 
its licensed procurators or adi 

darly reported to and watch* d over by hi 

who have superintendence 0V6T a group oJ 

tries, as in Denmark. 
i and decision oftheio art, whether* 

from by th. -• not, revise their whole pi 

check undue delay in giving ji or undi 

procurators ; and are themsel • 
: and surveillance in I 
still higher judicial 00 c. In the 4 



OQO FRANCE, PRUSSIA, AND ITALY. 

of modern Europe, the judicial power is thus more immediately, 
and for the people more readily and cheaply applied, and by a 
jiiiieiy more perfect, more divested of personal causes of 
error in judgment from political party feelings, prejudices, or 
interests, and more carefully watched over and checked, than in 
our own social economy in Britain. England and Scotland are, 
perhaps, the only two countries in Europe, which have not in 
the' course of the present half-century reconstructed their old 
imperfect or feudal arrangements for the administration of law 
to the people, and have not remodelled their law courts to suit 
the business of the age. 

In what then in modern times, if it be neither in the enact- 
ment nor in the administration of law, in what consists the dif- 
ference between free and despotic, liberal and anti-liberal govern- 
ment, as far as regards practically the social condition, and the 
moral and physical well-being of a people ! The difference lies 
in this. : — 

"Ian, in his social state, is not intended by his Creator to be 
only a passive subject of wise and gcod government, be it ever 
so wise and good, but to attain the higher moral condition of 
wisely and well governing himself, not only in his private moral 
capacity as an individual, but in his social, political capacity as 
one of the members of a community. Morality and religion di- 
rect him in his private capacity ; but if he is debarred by the 
arbitrary institutions of his government from exercising the 
other half of his social duties, he is, morally considered, but 
half a man, is answering but half the end for which man is 
sent into this world as a social being; is fulfilling but half the 
duties given him to be fulfilled by his Creator — for man is created 
a political as well as a moral being : has a political as well as a 
moral existence. A people governed by laws, in the enactment 
of which they have no voice, and by functionaries independent 
of public opinion, are in a low social and political, and, conse- 
quently; in a low moral condition, however suitable and excel- 
lent the law itself, and its administration may be. They are 
morally slaves. The Prussian, the Austrian, the Neapolitan, 
the Papal subjects stand equally upon this low moral level. The 
Prussian, the Austrian, and Tuscan do, no doubt, enjoy the 
advantage of many good laws and good institutions, but they 
do not enjoy the advantage of having made them — a moral 
advantage as great as the material advantage of having the 
benefit of them. If the public mind is not exercised and 



in prival individ 

a harder d 

a n « 1 

itic 
. with perhaps fch -puient, in rn-popu- 

fine arts, >liflb 

and are not 

but >le accomplishments to lii 

ant in r i the 

fort and happiness of bo d of 

civilised habi iter amov 

drements for man in 

aoral acquir 

an ii 'led, 

turns in all bernal a hich will 

Leave the 
moral beings unit • I in 

well, for very ' of indue 

id still ; 1, and a] 

with th 

ifp] jood with this kind of i lalcultun 

ment 1> ad to be 

ant bag their 

big in. 

be moral 
the human family, deman 

well-being, and \ 
in the intellectual ex 
position in Life be that in which hi 
nature can be fully and 



284 FltANCE, PRUSSIA, AND ITALY. 

capabilities, duties. and rights, as a thinking responsible free agent 
- — and his true education, that which fits him for this position — 
then are these autocratic governments and their subjects in a low 
social position — one far beneath that of the British — and their 
systems of national education are not adapted to the great moral 
end of human existence, but merely to support their govern- 
ments. If we fairly consider the social condition of the Conti- 
nental man of whatever class, whatever position, or whatever 
country, Neapolitan, or Austrian, or Prussian, we find him, body 
and soul, a slave. His going out and coming in, his personal 
bodily and mental action in the use of his property, in the 
exercise of his industry and talents, in his education, his religion, 
his laws, his doings, thinkings, readings, talkings in public or 
private affairs, are fitted on to him by his master, the state, like 
clothing on a convict, and in these alone can he move, or exe- 
cute any act of social existence. He has no individual existence 
socially or morally, for he has no individual free agency. His 
education fits him for this state of pupilage, but not for indepen- 
dent action as a reflecting self-guiding being, sensible of, and daily 
exercising his social, political, moral, and religious rights and du- 
ties as a free agent. In his position relatively to these rights and 
duties, the Continental man stands on a level very far below that 
of the individual of our country in a corresponding class of 
society. With all the ignorance and vice imputed to our lower 
classes, they are, in true and efficient education, as members of 
society acting for themselves in their rights and duties, and 
under guidance of their own judgment, moral sense, and con- 
science, in a far higher intellectual, moral, and religious condi- 
tion than the educated slaves of the Continent. This is the con- 
clusion, in social economy, which the author of the preceding 
Notes has come to, and which the reader is requested to 
consider. 



THE END. 



•8 2® 



M'CORQrODALE AND CO., FRTNTEXS, LONDON —WORKS, NEWTON. 









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